


Exit Wounds

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Demons, M/M, noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:47:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean, brought back from hell, deals with dreams and things not quite fitting into place.  (Post-season three.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exit Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Read the warnings. I seriously considered posting this anonymously, it's so not my usual bag. But I'm fond of it, and since I wrote it for Nep, I'm going to just go with it. It's dark, definitely not pretty, but not the worst thing in the history of time. Thank you to twasadark for the fabulously thorough beta, to Cormallen for being my sounding board, co-conspirator and perpetual hand-holder, to back_in_black for being the reason and the pillar of support (I'm running out of expressions for 'helpful'), to unjealous for going over this for me and reassuring me when things got muddy, and to balefully for holding the cheerleader sign and my hand at the same time.

Dean dreamed about hell. He wasn't surprised; he could remember everything, after all. The psychic-boy mojo that Sam used to bring him back into a body already heavily into the stages of decomp didn't extend to a magic memory erase. Not that Dean had even an educated guess as to what Sam had done, but all signs pointed to dark.

It wasn't like he thought his dreams would be hell-free, that the trauma of the place or whatever would be something so severe his mind couldn't process it. Dean wasn't _stupid_. He had thought about it in the weeks leading up to his deal coming due, even. Thought that if Sam wasn't able to cut him loose and he actually ended up in the pit, it would be bad. And that if he, by some miracle (divine or otherwise) managed to come back, it wouldn't be pretty.

First night back, Dean sat up against the headboard, staring at the motel bedspread across his knees until his eyes went dry and the pattern swam crazily. Sam wasn't much better off. He treated Dean like a rabid dog sure to bolt, calm and slow-speaking and acting like nothing was wrong. Tellingly, though, he was wide-awake and watching him like a hawk from the other bed. Sam eventually gave up waiting; he came up with a handful of sleeping pills and a Vicodin.

"These'll help you sleep."

Dean stared at the pills in Sam's palm and the furrow between Sam's eyebrows, the dark sheen of his worried eyes. He didn't make any move to take them from him.

"Dean, take them."

He did, swallowing them down without water and very little spit. He meant to ask, _how's my technically dead body supposed to respond to drugs, Sammy?_, but he didn't feel like opening his mouth. He kept his eyes on the bedspread until the pills kicked in and he nodded off.

He remembered burning. And his jaw breaking when they dropped him from the hooks and he hit the ground face-first. His front teeth shattered and slid to catch in the back of his throat, sharp as glass. The demons took turns fucking with him, tossing him back and forth between each other like cats carrying mice between their teeth.

But the bitch of it -- the thing that woke him up with his heart pounding, though it should have been sluggish with drugs and tissue breakdown -- wasn't the shit they'd done to him while he'd screamed and bled. The bitch of it was what he'd asked for.

\--

If Dean had actively been keeping track, he'd say it was a week into hell. There was no sun rising and setting, and definitely no clock ticking to mark the days, but a week felt right. Could have been longer. He was lying, curled up on his hands and knees with his forehead touching ground, the skin on his back completely stripped off. Dean guessed the demons were tired of what they'd been doing to him and were now moving on to something else. Straight-out torture only lasts for so long. You're in _hell_, and you know it can get worse than fire and hooks and flaying. It's a given. That's half the fun for the demons, finding stuff to make up the 'worse.'

In this case,‭ '‬worse' equaled‭ ‬a huge black creature that smelled like piss and smoke.‭ ‬Dean had never seen anything like it,‭ ‬not even in Bobby‭'‬s oldest books.‭ ‬He had a brief impression of‭ ‬horns and‭ ‬leathery wings‭ ‬before‭ ‬it crept behind him. Dean couldn't make himself turn around. It just hovered there, and Dean's awareness of its presence was an almost palpable weight. He waited for it to make its move, skin tingling and breath coming quick.

It wound spindly arms around his waist and dragged him backwards against what passed for its chest. One of the arms -- _another_ one of the arms, Jesus Christ -- swept over his lips, and Dean had a split second of realization before it shoved down Dean‭'‬s throat,‭ ‬making him‭ ‬gag.

He stopped screaming and bleeding at that point,‭ ‬and started begging. Or would have, if he'd had his mouth to use. That fucking thing, that hellspawn, whatever it was, it was definitely _worse_.

Once it touched him, his mind went from agony-horror-revulsion to ohfuck_please_. He had no time to process it, to feel the horror hit rock-bottom when he realized what was going on. His whole recollection got little hazy there, probably another effect of that thing working through his system like a drug; hell's version of a roofie. It was like his brain just switched off. Not that it was working at top speed anyway; a week down in hell was stripping him down. He thought Ruby might have been a little liberal with saying _centuries_ could make a demon, because it felt like a few months would burn out anything resembling humanity.

Dean loved it. It pulled him over and sank him onto two of its limbs like it was a cock and Dean bounced up and down, moaning for more. It fucked him like that, cloying smell all through his nose and him drooling over the limb in his throat, twitching in his esophagus. He did remember there'd been a demon there, just one, and he laughed while Dean whined and spread his legs so it could stuff another one in his hole.

His blood felt molten under his skin, and he was itchy all over. He felt like he was on fire, and not the kind he now had intimate experience with. He shifted in the creature's hold until the muscles in his thighs burned and he thought his hips might crack again. There was nothing, _nothing_ in his mind but the feverish urge to have it harder, deeper, to suck down more until his throat seized airtight around it. The thing seemed to know, if it even had a _brain_. It swelled in his ass and rubbed against his prostate, which, whoa; Dean had only been flirtingly introduced to that in life by a cute Asian chick with long fingers.

He was mumbling moans around it, grunts and senseless _unhs_ from what the creature passed off as pleasure, spit and blood and slime on his chin and chest. It slid two of the tentacles out of his ass and held it open with the other two, stretching it until Dean could feel God knew what dripping out of his hole and splatting underneath him. He jerked his hips in tiny circles, cock bobbing and hitting his stomach with sticky little thwaps, begging wordlessly for more, fuck, please, anything. He swallowed around the limb in his throat and bit it for good measure; that seemed to do the trick, and it slid a third one back between his cheeks, unfurling deep in his insides. Dean made a sound like an animal, guttural.

\--

He woke up on his stomach, gasping, humping the sheets of some ratty motel room, his cock spurting come right up against the waistband of his boxers. His legs were spread wide, feet on either side of the queen bed, and it felt like there'd been something _in_ his ass, leaving behind a phantom ache. Dean moved so fast it surprised him, his hunter reflexes still sharp despite his stint in hell, and palmed his knife. He flipped over, brandishing it.

There was no one there. Just Sam, sleeping in the bed across from him, or _pretending_ to sleep. It would so be like Sam to try and give Dean his dignity when Dean didn't have a concept of the word anymore. He cursed and put the knife back under his pillow, and in doing so noticed the top of the pillowcase was covered with spit. He eyed it a minute but ultimately just turned it over. Dean didn't want to get up; his legs felt funny, trembling like they'd give out on him. Come was cooling in his boxers, but even that annoyance was too much to consider cleaning up. His body was giving him issues and he was afraid to push it in case it gave out on him.

He lay back down, quiet. He kept his breathing hushed in case Sam wasn't really faking. One of them deserved their beauty sleep, at least.

His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of the room, and he made out a few cracks in the ceiling. The taut, shaky feeling in his thighs and calves began slowly receding. Dean figured he'd wrenched them totally out of whack by the way he'd been splayed on the bed.

Jesus. His heart was still pounding. Dean lifted his hand and pressed it to the skin above his heart, fingers skittering over thick, still-healing scars, the neat rows of sutures compliments of being torn to shreds by fucking hellhounds. It was surreal, being dead and alive at the same time. Kind of cool, if he was honest with himself; he felt the sort of begrudging admiration the Dean from before-hell would have had. Remembering what that felt like made him remember in turn that he should be _freaked the fuck out_ since he'd come in his shorts over having been drugged and raped by some sort of tentacle demon. In _hell_. He couldn't work up the ubiquitous illness and panic, though, only felt a vague sense of unease and the bone-deep satisfaction of a fricking great orgasm.

His ass still felt like there'd been something in it. Curious, Dean slid his other hand under the sheets and down his shorts, past the drying come and his flaccid dick, the flesh of his balls, until his finger slid knuckle-deep into his asshole. That tiny amount of stimulation, a ghost of a touch compared to what he had before, made his stomach tighten, and he choked an involuntary moan.   
Dean got himself off again, two fingers and totally dry until he remembered he could use his own spit to get them in easier, and then he used three. He rocked his dick up into nothing but the covers, listening carefully in the dark to make sure Sam slept on, or pretended to. He came hard, on an open-mouthed gasp, face contorted like a grimace with how good it was, how intense, especially after coming not five minutes before. Weird zombie bodies had their perks, maybe.

\--

After that night, he dreamt about it _every_ night, passing out only to wake up an hour or so later, his whole body aching with how bad he wanted to be fucked. There was only so much he could do to himself, four fingers and the edge of his thumb, rough and messy and not _deep_ enough, goddamnit.

The first few times it got him off, barely, but one night he nearly went fucking crazy trying to get it deeper in his ass, stretching himself out and straining to shove his middle finger further in, brushing touches against his prostate. He finally gave up and fumbled around in the dark, trying to find something, a candle, a fricking back-scratcher he thought he'd had, _anything_ longer than his own fingers.

He finally noticed Sam's hair brush, innocuous (and girly, Jesus _Christ_) on the bathroom counter. Dean didn't even hesitate; he snatched it up and sucked it into his mouth to give it some lube. His cock was so hard, leaking precome against the top of his thigh, balls drawn up tight; he needed it bad, just that last nudge to get him to shoot. In the bathroom, in front of the mirror but unseeing, Dean spread his legs and leaned himself against the counter so he could slide the handle of Sam's hairbrush into his hole. He did it slow, relishing in the way his ass gave way for it, the friction and the burn of the muscles making him shiver.

Dean did see himself in the mirror then, and he didn't _care_, his mouth slack and his eyes dazed as he pushed the brush in so deep the bristles started to scrape the bottom of his ass. One sharp push of it upwards, and he came so hard his knees buckled and his feet slid across the scungy tile.

"Oh, _fuck_," he said to himself after, pulling out the brush and trying to figure out the best method to clean it.

Dean took a breath and tugged a hand-towel down from the rack to clean up with, the coarse fibers over his cock feeling itchy and too sensitive. Once he was done cleaning up all the come and spit, he grabbed Sam's brush and ran it under the tap. It felt gross to leave it like that, with only a cursory rinse, so he went back into the room to rustle through Sam's bag for hydrogen peroxide. He found it and was headed back to finish disinfecting the brush, naked and getting kind of cold with his junk just hanging out, but Sam's voice came from the dark and startled him.

"Dean? You okay?"

"I'm fine, Sammy. Bad dream."

He shut the bathroom door and wondered if Sam would be pissed if he knew Dean was lying to him. Probably not. He'd probably be freaked out if he knew Dean was getting off by fucking himself with household objects -- _Sam's_ household objects, no less. And the fact that he was doing it over memories of hell, well. That was a bag of worms Dean didn't even want to contemplate.

The brush looked fine, good as new. Not like it was going to have a neon sign above it that said "used by a pervert" anyway, so Dean set it back down on the counter where he'd found it. He flicked off the light and went back to bed.

\--

Dean was holding himself open, begging for it, watching the tentacle snake inside him, and his shoulders were shaking. They just kept kept shaking and it dislodged the thing inside of him, which made him whine.

"Dean, _Dean_, wake the fuck up, oh my God," Sam was saying, shaking the fuck out of him. Dean blinked up at him; Sam's stupid hair, shaggy and uncut for all the time Dean was in hell, hung in his face, and his eyes were wide and stricken. "Jesus, you were _screaming_," and he still hadn't taken his hands off of Dean, pressing urgent touches over his chest and the scars there to make sure he was all right.

"I'm f-fine, jeeze," he managed to breathe out, although it was a miracle, because he was a hair's-breadth from coming and Sam's manhandling was _not_ helping. Dean bit down hard on the inside of his cheek and curled his toes, holding it back.

"You're not fucking _fine_, you sounded like a goddamn animal or something, I've never heard--"

"Dude." Dean was slowly reining it in, though his dick was still hard as a rock and not remotely dissuaded by Sam's mother hen routine, and he pushed himself up against the headboard in irritation. He crossed his arms over his chest and pulled his knees up; it probably looked defensive or protective, but mostly he was just trying to hide the hard on. "Chill out. I was just dreaming, wasn't like there was anything really going on."

Sam's jaw worked and then set, his mouth a stubborn, pissy line. It was the first time Dean had seen that look on Sam's face since he'd been back, and it was welcome after all of Sam's gentleness and over-sensitivity. He wore it even better now, paired it with the new lines at the corner of his eyes and the bags beneath, the pallor of no sleep and something else just beneath the surface. Probably whatever batshit demon power he'd been harvesting to Frankenstein Dean back to life and yank him out of hell. But under all of that, he was still Sam, still giving him shit and pissy expressions.

"Oh yeah? That why you're waking up in the middle of the night and running to the bathroom? Not like there's anything _really_ going on?"

Dean's eyes narrowed, working himself up to a nice moment of indignation, even if he was lying through his teeth on more than one count. "Sam. I'm fine. I just got out of _hell_. I'd say a few nightmares mean I'm doing just peachy."

"That was _not_ a fucking nightmare, that was-- that was worse. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were cursed, or, or, maybe hell is doing something to you when you sleep." Sam was pacing some now, his crazy geek brain coming up with all sorts of worst-case scenarios, and it made something tug in Dean's gut to watch it. He wasn't sure what the feeling was, still too strange in his own skin and disconnected, but he could guess.

"Sammy. Calm down. Breathe into a paper bag or somethin', Jesus." Dean slid his legs down until he felt the backs of his knees press against the mattress, and he contemplated getting up, making Sam sit down. His dick was still at attention, though, and Sam wasn't too caught up in his own emo to miss it.

He should have known that telling Sam to calm down was like waving red at a bull; Sam's whole body drew up in a fury and he spread his arms, seeming to take up half of the room. God, Sam was _huge_.

"Calm down? Yeah, because I have so much to be calm about. My brother is feeling the side effects of hell, and I'm some, I'm," he cut himself off there. Dean had already opened his mouth to shoot down what was sure to be an assessment of his demon powers. Demon powers that Sam had exclusively used to save Dean from an eternity of torment, which he wasn't going to complain about. Not like Sam was killing puppies and raping children. "You won't even talk to me," he finished, lowering his arms, but still thrumming with tension.

"What's to talk about, man? You can guess what went down. I don't particularly feel like re-living the experience in Technicolor or whatever."

Okay, kind of a huge lie; there was at least one part he was stupidly attempting to re-live every goddamn night. Not that he wanted back in hell with some beast raping him literally to the point of death. There was just something in him, something that fucker unlocked, that needed to be filled or it felt like he'd go insane over it.

Sam watched him, and it didn't make Dean nervous, since that emotion felt pretty much burned away, but it wasn't good, either. Dean straightened up against the headboard and tried to meet his stare head-on, jaw just as stubborn.

"There's something you're not telling me," Sam continued, like Dean hadn't even spoken. Dean threw up his hands in exasperation and let them thump back down on the covers. "No, don't. I don't care. If it's just nightmares." He trailed off and rubbed a hand over his forehead, pinched the bridge of his nose, settling into the bed like he was in for a long night. "You have to tell me what's going on, man. So I can help you."

Sam's voice had gone soft again; it'd been that way, off and on, since Dean had come back, and it was the same way he spoke when he was helping a damsel in distress. Dean didn't appreciate it. "What're you going to do if I don't wanna tell you, _force_ it out of me?"

Sam's chin jerked up, affirmative. "If I have to."

_That_ sent an uncomfortable jolt down his spine, piercing the fog of numbness he'd been trying to deal with. It felt good, knowing there was something to him aside from a burned out shell and old habits, but terrifying. It unsettled him in places hell hadn't quite been able to get to. Sam poking around in his head, using his powers to interrogate him; it was harsh. It was a lot different than the Sam Dean had left behind.

Dean grabbed his pillow with one hand and the comforter with the other, bunching up the fabric of both in furious fists. "If that's the way you feel about it," he said, voice deadly calm, "then I'm sleeping in the fucking bathroom."

It was a lame victory. He shut the door behind him -- bathrooms were becoming a _theme_ with him -- and locked it. He knew Sam could pick the lock in five seconds flat, so he sat down and put his back against it so Sam would have to work that much harder to bust through.

Fucking Sam. Dean waited, body tense and raring for a fight, but Sam didn't come after him or try and force him out of there with his powers.

He fell asleep like that, hours later, pressed against the door, clenching his teeth and still hard, a fire in his body started by Sam.

\--

They eventually had to leave that motel room when Sam's credit card was declined and he didn't have another one in that name. He wouldn't leave Dean alone long enough to go hustle pool, either, so Dean packed up his shit and piled it in the backseat of the Impala. He'd only been in her once, maybe twice, since coming back; riding from Stull Cemetery where Sam dragged Dean back to earth, then to the motel they'd been staying at in Podunk, Kansas.

Dean knew how fast Sam would shoot him down if he made noise about driving; even a guilt trip over being a dead guy who'd been on vacation in hell wouldn't have budged him, so he didn't try. He climbed into the passenger seat without a word, Sam hustling him in and standing by the passenger side to check that he had his seat-belt on and that he didn't _need_ anything, did you forget something in the room, Dean? Dean grunted a negative and folded himself up, getting used to being in a car again, let alone in the passenger seat. He slid on the sunglasses he found tucked inside the glove compartment where he'd left them, on top of ketchup packets and a map of Ohio.

Last time he hadn't given the Impala a proper look, but Sam had kept her up, even the dash shining and dust-free, and she sounded fine when he started her.

"I'm heading to the next town over," Sam announced when they pulled out of the parking lot, knuckles white on the wheel, tone bland.

"That's a little pointless, you think?" Dean asked, tone bland right back. "We could head out of state. Nice day for a drive."

Sam broke his neutral facade to shoot Dean an incredulous look. "You are in no shape to take a _drive_, Dean. You need to rest. I'm getting us to the closest motel and that's it."

There was a little bit of irritation burning in the back of his mind over Sam's refusal, but Dean ignored it. It was enough that it was there in the first place, a welcome break from feeling so numb all the time. He frowned and turned toward the window, watched Kansas freeway pass by.

\--

They literally did stop only about ten exits up the road. Dean thought they might have been in the same town. He gave Sam an incredulous look, but went with him inside to book a room. A bored looking Asian guy kept one eye on the TV as he told them they only had smoking rooms left.

"Uh, you guys are nowhere near full," Dean pointed out, tapping his fingers in an unsteady rhythm on the slick countertop. A rack of brochures to his left was more interesting to look at than the MTV reality show the kid was watching, or staring at Sam's familiar face.

"We're doing some remodeling," was all he said on the subject. "There's a Ramada down the street."

Sam put them down for a week on Larry Boothe's credit card. He kept trying to take Dean's duffle from him, even though it was ten steps to their room. Dean ended up giving him a swift elbow to the gut and he relented, looking remarkably pissy. Dean may have been a little out of touch, but Sam was pretty easy to read. He definitely got the feeling that Sam gave in not because of the insistence (or the elbow), but because he wanted Dean indoors pronto.

As soon as the door was shut, Sam busted out the salt, lining the doorway and the one window the room offered. Dean unpacked his stuff, figuring it wouldn't be prudent to live out of a duffle if they were there for at least a week. In his peripheral, he watched Sam carve protection runes into the cheap wood of the door. Larry Boothe was sure to appreciate the extra charges.

When Sam was done, he picked up a Yellow Pages and started thumbing through it. "What do you want for dinner?" he asked. "A lot of places here deliver."

"Don't care. Surprise me." He sorted clean shirts from dirty socks and come-stained boxers. All his laundry was getting rank, balled at the bottom of his bag. He only had one more pair of shorts left and then he'd be free-balling. Nice. "We need to do laundry."

"You can use some of my stuff," Sam said, distracted, still buried in the phone book.

"That's just -- we can do the damn laundry. I'm not an invalid or on suicide watch or whatever it is you think you're doing." He threw a dirty sock at Sam, a calculated gesture, meant to piss him off but remind him that Dean was an annoying older brother, still Dean. Dean was pleased with himself for thinking of it.

Sam looked at him. His eyes were cold and hard, furious, like something was moving behind them; it made that new buzzing feeling he directly identified as being _Sam_ in Dean's body stop cold and start again, like a heart shocked back into pumping. "Shut the fuck up, Dean."

He did. He couldn't not. He didn't speak until an hour later when the pizza came and Sam broke the whammy when he asked what kind of dipping sauce Dean wanted with his pizza.

Dean didn't know what to say to that.

\--

Sam using his powers like that, not just Sam threatening to, or the thought that he could if he wanted, it pissed Dean off. The fury raced through his veins and made his body feel more alive than it did when he actually had been. It made him want to run laps around the motel's parking lot or throw punches or shoot something in the face. It felt great. It woke him up in the middle of the night and had him panting and fucking himself to the point where his fingernails tore him up inside and made him bleed some. Being mad at Sam, that was _something_, and it was almost enough to make the anger at Sam go away in the first place.

Sam noticed. He didn't say anything about it, but he had to have noticed. He went about his business, still stared at Dean like a hawk and spent hours on the laptop. He also pointedly said nothing about Dean's nighttime activities, and Dean should have been relieved but he wasn't. He wagered relief was just another one of those emotions he was struggling with after hell.

Dean tried to wake himself up before he got too loud. It was difficult, like training his body to be extra paranoid, and it made for too-light, unrestful sleep. He managed, though, and slammed into the bathroom to fuck himself in there, arching up onto his toes to get his fingers in at the right angle standing up. Or Sam's brush. He didn't use it much, he figured that was too creepy, but sometimes the itch got so bad he had to, and the wrong of it made him come harder, clenching hard around it. After, he couldn't help but think about what Sam thought he must be doing in there, puking or crying or freaking out, balled up on the floor. He thought about how Sam must be dealing with it.

Not like the truth would be any easier.

\--

"Dean."

He'd been dreaming again, only half awake now and already halfway to the bathroom. He thought he might have imagined Sam saying his name in some sort of sleep daze. But he hadn't.

"Come back and sit down."

It was laced with Sam's powers, or Azazel's powers, if he granted technicality. It made the dark feeling within Dean roar in his ears like adrenaline, and maybe that's what it was, at least partially. He couldn't stop himself from going back over to the bed, walking reticent and jerky like a marionette doll, and sitting back down. Sam flicked on the light and fixed him with a stare so loaded it tightened his whole body and Dean had to look away.

When he spoke, it was precise, filled with more of the power. "What are you doing in there? Tell me."

Dean had bitten his tongue off before, in hell, but he didn't want to do it again. Still, his mouth did an admirable job of trying to lock shut, and he practically spat at Sam. "Getting off."

Dean could see Sam's shock hit him like a bucket of ice water. It disrupted Sam's hold over him somehow, the demonic powers that twisted his eyes into righteous, burning flames faded and left behind horror in its stead. Dean lunged himself at Sam, not even like a hunter; there was no training, no calculation, just fury. It snapped like a bone and he went at Sam like an animal. His hands were outstretched claws, and Sam put his own hands up and held Dean back, but barely. Dean thrashed and snarled.

"Fucking asshole, fucking tear your throat out--"

Even in the grip of rage, Dean knew somewhere in there that he didn't really want to, that it was Sam, and that Sam could probably hold him off. Hell had made a stronger impression on him, though, and all that deadness he'd been feeling was suddenly gone, like someone had lifted the veil. Now he was all spitting fury and his dick was hard, his ass clenching around nothing, his body looking for something to fuck and fight.

"Don't fight me, Dean," Sam thundered.

Dean stopped, just like that. His body went lax against Sam and he fell forward with an oof of surprise. Sam took his wrists and shoved him back, hard, until Dean hit the edge of his own bed.   
He sat, his head stunned and dizzy, and rubbed a hand over his mouth. He tried to say something, but nothing came out, probably Sam's whammy keeping him from saying anything at all in case it might be argument.

"I'm not going to fucking apologize for doing that." Sam's hands clenched at his sides. He was visibly trying to compose himself. Dean met his eyes and felt a shudder run through him at the connection; it felt like he was throwing himself against bars. "I doubt you'd have killed me," he continued, and looked like he meant it, "but I'm not in the mood to go to the hospital."

It was on the tip of Dean's tongue to say, _what, you can't use your powers to heal yourself?_, but he still couldn't speak.

"You can speak," Sam said, frowning, but still kept Dean on a tight leash. He wondered what would happen if Sam took it all back, if Dean would be back to snarling or if he'd be calm, if this was permanent.

"Yeah, thanks," Dean muttered, not quite remembering how to be sarcastic.

"You're going to explain to me what you said about getting off, Dean."

"Sam--" Frustration and something that felt a lot like fear bubbled up in Dean's chest and started to suffocate him. The whammy headed it off before his protest even started. _Don't fight me_. "I dream about hell, about being fucked by a demon, some sort of monster, it had tentacles and I get off on it. It drugged me. I like the feeling of something in me deep, something big, so I--"

"Stop." Dean did, shutting his mouth so hard his teeth clacked. "Jesus. Jesus _Christ_, Dean."

"Sam."

Sam didn't seem to hear him say his name. He was staring away from Dean with a pinched expression, like he was in pain, his mouth curled down so severely it looked like a sneer. "Dean. Why didn't you say anything?"

Dean laughed, but it felt like a punch coming out of him. "Because this isn't something I'm just going to _tell you_. It's just something I deal with. It's fine." He hurled the words out like they didn't even make sense, half of him pissed off that Sam thought he should have spilled his guts about this, and half of him wanting to let Sam know that he wasn't torn up over it. He didn't think he was _able_ to be torn up about it.

"Okay. Okay. Okay." Sam kept muttering it to himself, nodding. Dean winced at the look in his eyes, intense and dark and not a little unhinged. He made himself look away. "Okay. Here's what -- Dean." He put the whammy back in his voice, sharp and clear like a bell. "You are not going to dream about it, what the demon did to you, any more."

\--

He didn't dream about _anything_ that night. He woke up with his jaw locked; probably he'd been grinding his teeth all night. All in all, he felt awful in a fairly regular way. The pillow was bunched under his neck at an odd, uncomfortable angle, the handle of his knife a vague lump beneath it. Dean had almost forgotten what it felt like to have a bad night over a shitty mattress or a too-stuffy room, body aching and sluggish the next morning.

Dean stared up at the ceiling, his arms crossed behind his head. His left thigh twinged, the fresh scar tissue puckered and taut down to muscle. He flexed his leg, rolled his foot at the ankle and tried to alleviate the stiff feeling, echoes of the exercises Dad taught them, but nothing short of pain killers was going to make any difference.

It wasn't until the lock on the door to the room started to click that Dean noticed Sam wasn't in the room. It flipped him out, his obliviousness, and he scrambled for the knife under his pillow until he realized the person unlocking the door was likely Sam, the only person with the keycard. He kept hold of the knife but slid it under the sheets in case he was wrong, not wanting Sam to think he was unhinged or something, and waited.

Sunlight flooded the room, made him blink, and Sam gave Dean a wavering smile. He looked like he wanted to ask Dean if he was all right, but stood there in silence, a bag that read King's Doughnuts clutched in his hand, the bottom stained with pastry grease. He had a carry container with two large coffees in his other hand.

Dean let the knife slip from his fingers and pulled his hand from beneath the sheet.

"You want coffee? I bought breakfast."

"I can see that." He pressed heels of his palms to his eyes, trying to banish the tension of a headache starting up. Great. "Why didn't you wake me up and let me know you were going?"

"I tried to, but you slept like the dead, man." Sam set the coffee and doughnuts down on the table next to his laptop and a badly bound copy of the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. His hair fell into his eyes and across his cheek, and even in profile Dean could see he was fighting back a smile. "I wasn't gone very long."

Dean was silent. Sam seemed almost smug, giddy, over what he'd done to Dean, but he couldn't rustle up the appropriate anger to let him have it. Sam's order not to fight him must have been standing. "Hand me that coffee."

Sam's long fingers plucked it from the cardboard container and passed it over. He didn't make a move to offer Dean the doughnuts or drink any coffee of his own; he took off his jacket and tossed it on the bed, watching Dean out of the corner of his eye.

Dean burned his tongue on the coffee. He rubbed it over his lips and the raised tastebuds felt like sandpaper. "Stop staring at me and turn on the TV or something," he said, distracted by the way his tongue felt when it brushed against his teeth. He stuck it out and swept it over his bottom lip a few times, smacked his mouth and set the coffee down. His mouth was too burned to taste anything and he had no desire to make it worse by swallowing more of the scalding liquid.

The tv turned on, so old it took a moment to warm up, the picture flickering into view. Sam settled at the edge of his bed and held the remote loosely in his hand, eyes straight ahead. It was the news, which Dean didn't particularly care about, but he watched it because there wasn't anything else to do. Sam kept the weapons in the trunk of the Impala, and he refused to let Dean clean them out of some misguided protectiveness. It would have kept his hands busy and they probably needed the maintenance; Sam tended to let that shit slide.

After ten minutes of weather and traffic reports, Sam got up and grabbed the bag of doughnuts. He always claimed Dean was a pig, and a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, he used to joke that Dean was going to burn for gluttony, which wasn't even that funny _before_ Dean went to hell. But if you got Sam anywhere near pastries, he'd eat his weight in them and get really ticked off if Dean tried to get him to share. He watched as Sam pulled out an apple fritter and ate half of it in one bite. The bag was bulging. Dean would be lucky if he got a freaking maple bar out of it, and he didn't want one in the first place.

"You should really cut back on carbs, those jeans are looking tight."

Sam's jaw clenched as he chewed and made a pissed off face. "Are you seriously trying to say I'm fat?" he demanded, but the indignation was ruined by the amused gleam in his eye and the way his voice sounded thick with a mouthful of food.

Dean shrugged. "I'm just saying, Sam, the Impala can only handle so much of your ass before she starts dragging."

"I was going to buy you pie after dinner, but fuck that," Sam swallowed hard and pulled another doughnut from the bag, "you're eating salad and spinach until I'm feeling generous again." He licked chocolate frosting off of his thumb, grinning, and popped the doughnut into his mouth whole, chewing with his mouth open.

"That's disgusting. I hope you puke."

Sam grunted. "Pot, meet kettle. Oh, man, M*A*S*H is on."

\--

"Hey."

"What?" He turned the volume down on The View. Seriously, there was nothing worth watching on weekday mornings; it was like being stuck in the television equivalent of A Horse With No Name.

Sam coughed and shifted on the bed, legs spread and hands limp in his lap. He'd unbuttoned his jeans earlier, and Dean had laughed at him, hard, and started talking about what he wanted for lunch until Sam threw the remote at his head. It was a stupid move because it meant Dean was in charge, and even hell couldn't change the fact that he was a chronic channel surfer and it drove Sam _nuts_. "I, uh, I think there's something wrong with the Impala."

"Jesus God, Sam, I was gone for like a month, tops, and you managed to fuck up my car."

"I didn't fuck up your car! It's old, man, and it made this weird grinding noise on the way to the doughnut place. _And_ the tapedeck ate ReLoad." Sam liked the only Metallica album Dean actively hated, which said more about what a loser he was than Dean ever could.

"Did you take off the parking brake before you drove it?" Sam gave him a _no shit_ look. He'd always forgotten to take it off when Dad was teaching him how to drive; Dean screamed at him until he lost the habit and moved onto stalling out every five feet instead. Sam was kind of a spastic teenager. Of course, that was back when the car was a standard, before Dad spent a summer switching it to automatic, the summer it was handed down to Dean. "I'll look at it later."

"Um, you don't have to do it tonight, we're not going anywhere--"

"Did you leave my jack in the trunk?"

"I didn't mess with any of your stuff," Sam said quietly.

Dean nodded. "I'll check her out before it gets dark."

\--

Sam unlocked the trunk of the Impala, lifted the false bottom, and got the jack out, unloading it and the stands on the ground in a row so precise Dean was almost impressed. He moved quickly, not stopping to toss glances over his shoulder as Dean looked on, hurrying so he wouldn't be able to see the arsenal. Dean felt his jaw tic but didn't say anything. Not like he didn't know what was in there, and it certainly didn't bother him, whatever Sam might be thinking to the contrary. His brother had his quirks, though, and Dean would let him have them until it was time for a hunt. They both could use a little leeway.

"Do you need anything else?" Sam asked, nervously wiping sweat from his brow.

"Um, yeah," Dean said slowly, as patient as he could manage. Sam may not have spent much time under the hood, but he wasn't _stupid_, for Christ's sake. "How about some blocks for the tires and a creeper. We need to go to the store. Or we could go to Bobby's, he's got everything," he amended, trying not to sound too hopeful.

Sam shook his head. "We don't need to go to Bobby's. I've got a creeper in here too, and there's some bricks to block the tires."

Those... had _definitely_ not been there last time Dean looked in the trunk.

"The hell? Did you dump out everything when I died or what?"

Sam flushed. "Don't be stupid. I just thought they might be useful. The Impala's not exactly a spring chicken."

"Sure, yeah." He raised his eyebrows dubiously. "_Bricks_?"

"I went shopping when -- I figured you might want to work on the car, okay?" he finally managed to spit out, flailing just a little. "And it was making funny sounds, and, just stop looking at me like that, will you?"

Dean found himself grinning irrepressibly. "Aww, you're tryin' to make me feel better, aren't you. Sammy, that's so thoughtful." He shoved at Sam's shoulder and Sam swatted him away, mumbling and turning a really unattractive shade of pink.

"Lemme get the rest of the stuff."

Sam carefully moved over a rifle, a coil of rope, and a ceremonial dagger until he unearthed the creeper and bricks at the bottom of the trunk. They managed to stuff a lot of crap into that trunk, a feat Dean had been proud of and staunchly defended when Sam claimed they needed to go through it and throw stuff out. It was a pain in the ass to get to some of it, but what can you do. Although he was carting around stays and a creeper and bricks, it was a miracle his baby wasn't dragging ass along concrete.

"Where's the flashlight?" He didn't see it in its usual place. "You chuck it with the rest of my awesome stuff to make room for freaking bricks?"

"It burned out," Sam said, and handed him the creeper. It was dusty and slick with oil, staining Dean's fingers the instant he touched it. It was big and clunky and on the cheap side; Dean dropped it on the ground, wheels clacking hard on the pavement. He nudged it with his boot until it sat where he needed it, just under the carriage. Sam looked on, wiping his greasy hand on his jeans. "I've got a smaller one or the lantern."

"Gimme the smaller one." Sam grabbed it. It was thin, maybe as long as a pencil, and practically useless for what Dean needed. He sighed and tucked it into his pocket. "All right. Help me with these stays."

\--

It took a ridiculous half an hour to get the Impala jacked up, mostly because Sam refused to let Dean do the dirty work and took his sweet ass time doing it himself. Dean was ready to kick him when he finally deemed it safe.

"Finally." His scars pulled when he got down and positioned himself, but he didn't so much as wince; he'd been getting used to the sensation and figured it wasn't going away any time soon.

"Wait, is that everything?"

"Uh-huh."

"What're you--"

"I already know what's wrong. It's the tranny." He'd been meaning to fix it before his time was up, but Sam had them racing from state to state so fast he'd barely had impetus to shower at night, let alone get under the hood.

"Is it -- is it a good idea for you to be on the ground like this?" Sam asked, voice lilting into an anxious whine.

"I know what I'm doing, man. You're the one who had the bright idea in the first place, you don't get to pussy out of it. I'm just lookin', anyway." The creeper had blessed little in the way of padding, plus the pulling of his scars made it feel like someone was sitting on his chest. _And_ this was one of his favorite shirts likely getting covered in stains that wouldn't come out, but if he said anything Sam would get fussy.

Sam shut up and let him work, standing by the hood silently; Dean could see his legs in his out of the corner of his eye, the dark wash of his jeans.

It was kind of lame how instantly Dean relaxed under the hood of his car, just poking around. He wasn't up to getting down and dirty with tools yet, but it couldn't hurt to rule out any other problems. He wondered if Bobby could hook him up with a refurbished tranny, or if he knew someone who could on the cheap. He and Sam could head back down to South Dakota soon and wait for him to find one, and Dean could spend some lazy fall days elbow-deep in engine grease.

That reminded him, he hadn't talked to Bobby since he'd been back. He hadn't even _thought_ of him, which he guessed made sense. Dean hadn't been up to much and Sam was too busy playing prison guard to bother with filling him in on how everybody was, but soon it'd be time to get everything squared away and back to normal. Or as normal as it could be. Dean wasn't fooling himself.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how Bobby was doing; he'd turned off the flashlight and was rolling from out under the car, but someone spoke before he could. Sam's foot hit hard against the wheel of the creeper, keeping him where he was. Dean gaped.

"Cherry ride. What year?" It was a man, and he gave a low whistle. Dean hadn't heard him come up, and Sam hadn't said anything.

"67," Dean answered loudly, because no way in hell was Sam going to, since that would implicitly claim ownership. The Impala was _his_ car. He squinted past Sam's legs to see the other guy's; he was wearing khakis and sneakers. He'd just stopped to stare, like a thousand before him had. Dean tried to roll the creeper forward again, but Sam stopped the wheel again, and now that he knew it wasn't a mistake, the whammy compelled him to just lie there and wait. The memory of Sam's voice echoed in Dean's head; _don't fight me, Dean_.

"You're gonna wanna go inside," Sam said, tense and menacing, and Dean dropped the flashlight in shock.

"Uh, Sammy--" he tried, his own voice echoing back at him strangely from under the bulk of the Impala. "You wanna let me out, man?"

The dude was silent, probably speechless at Sam's sudden hostility, and Dean couldn't blame him. "What?"

"Go inside, pal."

"What's your problem?"

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Sam didn't answer him; instead he bent and dragged the sides of the creeper until Dean was staring up at him, squinting at the sun after the relative darkness of being under the car. Sam grabbed Dean's arm hard, fingers squeezing bruises into his bicep, and hefted him upwards. The creeper went skittering backwards at the inertia, but Sam ignored that, too.

He started dragging him towards their room. Dean's boots caught on gravel and he stumbled, but Sam twisted him upwards and made sure he didn't fall. The poor guy Sam'd been messing with was still around, and Dean tried to turn and apologize, but Sam's goddamn order wouldn't let up, and he was lucky it didn't because Dean wanted to kill him.

Sam shoved him inside, and Dean yelled, "Sorry!" over Sam's gigantic shoulder before the door slammed and locked. Sam kept one hand still on Dean, holding him in place like it was effortless.

"What the hell is your problem?" Sam finally let go of his arm and Dean rubbed a hand over it instinctively, pressing on where it was sore to see how bad it would be. "Answer me, goddamnit, you just went psycho on some poor dude for _no reason_\--"

"No reason?" Sam's eyes narrowed to slits, so shadowed they looked black. "He could have been a demon--"

"He was _not_ a fucking demon--" _don't give me that bullshit_ was the rest of what he was going to say, but he came up against the wall of Sam's powers; they stopped him like a hand slapped over his mouth. He tried to ask Sam to take the thing off of him already, but it seemed like that counted as fighting, so he couldn't choke it out.

"He could have been, Dean, he could have gotten the drop on us."

"Okay, one? You're insane. Two, he wasn't a demon, or, or anything supernatural, you just went postal in a frickin' parking lot. Three, _stop_ treating me like a delicate flower, I may not be one hundred percent yet but you're pissing me off, and four, _fuck you_\--" The whammy cut him off again.

Sam drew up on him, stepping so close they were nose to nose and he towered like a building over Dean, who refused to shrink back. They'd fought like this before, but not for a long time, and if Sam thought hell had turned Dean into some cowering mess, he had another thing coming.

"I busted you out of hell, Dean, and I'm some sort of demonic messiah. I've been as thorough as I can be with keeping us out of sight, but I can't hide us forever. There's probably something I've missed. The odds of a demon showing up on our door? Are _high_, as in practically a certainty." Sam sucked in a breath, trying to slow himself down. Dean felt the exhalation hit his face, warm and strangely scentless, only a hint of coffee and sugar. "He was a demon or he wasn't; I don't really care. Point is, I'm not letting you out in the open like that."

"Gonna whammy me again, _if you have to_, keep me inside, locked up nice and tight?" Dean asked from between gritted teeth. "That's your answer to all this?"

Sam's shoulders, rigid and heaving with his breath, went even more taut. He blinked down at Dean, still not giving an inch. "Yes. For now. Damnit, listen to me. I can't--"

"Goddamnit, would you stop? Just listen to yourself, man, you're freaking me out here."

"That's great, Dean, _I'm_ freaking _you_ out. Jesus Christ. I'm sorry, look, until this blows over --"

"Until this blows over, you're keeping me in here, whammying me--"

"_I'm trying to protect you_."

He pushed against Dean so that he wouldn't be able to go anywhere. If you counted being able to back up and run into a wall as going somewhere. Sam grabbed him by the shoulders, fingers pinching, and shook him once, hard. Dean felt his teeth click together along with the rattling, but not the pain that should have went along with it.

"Why can't you let me help you?" Sam hissed, shaking him again, "Dean."

Nails dug into his shoulders, and Dean knew he'd have ten perfect, finger-shaped bruises come morning. Hell, by midnight. He made a noise and went utterly slack in Sam's hold. He couldn't say what made him do it, whether it was the whammy or whether his subconscious felt like it had to roll over and show its stomach -- Sam had a good twenty pounds and three (five, honestly) inches on him, and he was using it. Dean couldn't see the whites of his eyes they were so narrowed, flashing and tumultuous, the kind of stuff Dean didn't think existed outside of chick novels. And he just _stood_ there. Not letting go.

Dean shuddered when he realized he was hard, dick pressing up painfully against the teeth of his zipper, no boxers to cushion the sensation. "Sammy," he tried, voice weak in his throat. Sam's head cocked to the left, like he'd heard Dean say his name from a distance and couldn't quite make it out. "I." He had to get away before he came in his freaking pants, fuck, _fuck_, Sam was just there almost pressed against him and if he moved any he could feel it and he was so huge, he could-- "It's okay, man. I'm sorry. I'm goin' crazy cooped up, is all." He threw in a smile, a half-hearted tilt to the right side of his mouth.

It was like some magic word; Sam's fingers loosened and his hands dropped down to his sides, his face going from angular and pissed off to soft and worried, brow furrowing.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I could use a shower and some sleep. I'm. I'm fine."

Sam nodded, backed away and Dean brushed past him without wasting another moment, slamming the door to the bathroom behind it. He stood against it and breathed, counting to ten in his head, remembering the drills Dad used to put him through for his memory, to keep him sharp, to calm him down when shit went haywire. It didn't help.

The shower sounded harsh in the room's silence, but it wasn't as loud as the white noise in his head. Dean methodically took off his clothes, folding them and putting them on the closed toilet lid in a neat pile. His dick was still hard and bobbing, smacking against his stomach, but he didn't touch it, didn't think about it. Dean stepped into the bitterly cold shower and turned his face up to the spray, barely feeling it sting the thin skin of his eyelids and the sutures on his chest.

_Why can't you let me help you?_

\--

Sam acted like nothing fucking happened when he got out of the shower. He was sitting at the tiny table, sprawled out and buried in a book -- not even a grimoire or the like, but a cheap paperback mystery. The quick smile he gave Dean was distracted, and Dean didn't bother to return it before he crawled into bed and pulled the covers up to his neck, still shaking from the cold shower.

He couldn't fall asleep, not with Sam still awake, shifting and turning pages with soft flicks. He closed his eyes and faked it as best as he could, but the rumbling in his head, the leaden weight in his stomach, the hard rise of his cock, kept him half-crazy.

Sam eventually moved from the book to watching tv, changing into sleep clothes while someone talked about gas prices on CNN. Dean could hear every word clearly, like the news anchors were in the room with him. A touch to his shoulder made him startle, but he caught it before his reaction could let Sam know Dean definitely wasn't asleep.

"Dean?" Sam whispered. At Dean's lack of response, he went to his own bed and settled in to watch the program.

It lasted for another hour. His shoulders ached, fresh and strange compared to the pull and itch of his old scars, the tears in his skin still mending. One that bisected his tattoo itched stronger than the rest, a constant reminder.

Dean rolled over and smashed his face into the pillow after he heard Sam's light switch off for the night.

He didn't dream.

\--

The clock was the first thing he noticed through blurry eyes -- 4:12. The room was pitch black. 4:12 in the morning. He went to ask Sam why the hell he was banging around at four in the morning, as some people were trying to get their beauty sleep, but when he rolled over, Sam's bed was empty. His jacket wasn't on the chair where he'd left it, and Dean wasn't too groggy to put the pieces together. Although Sam was trying to be quiet as he closed the motel door behind him, Dean woke up anyhow.

Sam left. At four in the morning, Sam snuck out of bed like he was sixteen and _left_. Not that Sam had been the sneaking out type at sixteen, or ever; that was more Dean, meeting girls at empty parks or in the parking lot to fool around until Dad caught on and chewed him out.

Sam's lack of presence in the room made him nervous and shaky. He worried at his bottom lip with his teeth. Dean threw off the covers to chase after him. He hadn't heard the Impala start so it was a good chance Sam was on foot and Dean could catch up. But then what? "How dare you take a walk or go to a bar or go buy girly shit at four in the morning and leave me alone?" Yeah, and Sam would probably freak out and lay on some whammy and refuse to leave Dean alone ever, full stop.

He stopped himself from stepping into his boots, picked up his cell phone and went over to the window in case the streetlights or the moon was bright enough to spot Sam. He was working up the nerve to call and demand where he'd gone, to make some joke about bringing back porn mags, when a loud booming knock startled him. The phone nearly flew from his fingers, and he clutched it with white knuckles waiting to see what would happen, if the knock would come again.

It did. It sounded like it was coming from outside his door, but he checked the peephole and it wasn't. It was just _loud_, three swift, measured bangs, brunt force of someone's angry fist against the door. He pressed his forehead against the windowpane, sweat already streaking the glass, and tried to see where the knocking was coming from. He couldn't, no matter how he twisted his head.

Dean heard a door open to another room, then the low sounds of someone talking, but through the window it was so faint he thought he might have been imagining it in some desperate hysteria. He wiped at the fog his breath left, then the damp of sweat from his face, and tried to control his breathing so he could hear. His heart wasn't pounding crazily in his chest, and he counted himself lucky.

The door closed with a slam, and whatever voices he'd heard before were silenced utterly. Dean pulled in a shaky breath, feeling light- headed from struggling to keep himself even. He stepped away from the window and opened his phone to text Sam, a simple _where the fuck are you_. He debated a _hurry back_, a smiley or a smart-ass remark about trysts, when a thump, long and louder than the knocking had been, made his hands freeze and his stomach pang in fear.

It was a few doors over. The only person Dean had seen during his stay so far was that guy in the parking lot, and holy shit, that was exactly where he'd come from. Sam had left, hadn't woken Dean up, and _Jesus Christ_ he was next door. He was doing something stupid and he'd gone in by himself.

His hands shook too hard and the phone fell the floor. Empty hands pulled into fists and clenched so hard he could feel his fingers piercing half-moons into the flesh of his palms. Usually it was a way to distract himself, to get his shit under control, but Dean's hardwired behaviors and responses were totally off the rails since hell. He didn't know how to do anything. He didn't know how to calm himself down or where his favorite boot knife was or his Glock or how to go help his brother. He couldn't get into the Impala without the keys or something to pick the lock, and he had neither.

He remembered how it felt before when he'd lost track of Sam and things went bad, back when Meg possessed him. That dead hunter, Steve Wandell. Dean may have been wrong about the circumstances, but he was right when he said Sam wouldn't just go off and kill somebody. Self-defense, maybe, and Sam had less than a qualm about killing bad sonofabitches. The thought wasn't very comforting when he could hear Sam's muffled yelling down the hall, and the grating sounds of what might have been a exorcism.

Or what might have been an insane rant from a guy stretched too far, gone crazy from trying to protect, to _fix_, his brother.

_God, Sammy, please be okay, please let me be dreaming, I'm sorry, come back, come back, Sammy_.

\--

Dean was lying in bed when Sam came back, pretending to sleep. He thought he faked it pretty well, considering he'd only just dashed back to the mattress and yanked the covers up to his chin as Sam was unlocking the door. He'd been in the bathroom, rinsing the taste of puke from his mouth with mouthwash when he heard the car Sam had taken pull back into the parking lot.

It was sunrise when Sam left again, Dean watching his tall, sturdy form backlit with peaches and golds, watched as he carried the body of the man two doors down out in a sheet, piling him into his own car. Mazda. The backseat was barely big enough to fit his corpse. Now it was full morning, the light almost too bright to be real, birds chirping outside.

Sam moved through the room like a ghost, as quiet as he'd ever been. Dean smelled coffee and something else under it, sweat and dirt and the metallic funk of blood. Sam stopped over his bed and Dean willed his breathing to come steadily, the whoosh of an almost-snore, for his eyelids not to tremble, for his body not to betray him. It must have been convincing, because Sam moved on. He closed the bathroom door behind him and started the shower.

\--

When he came out, he wore a towel and a smile. His hair was pelting his chest with fat, rolling droplets of shower water, and he shook off like a dog while Dean pretended to blink sleep from his eyes.

"I got you coffee," Sam said, pawing through clothes to find a pair of underwear. He came up with white briefs and pulled them on under his towel.

Dean cleared his throat. "Thanks."

"You feel like going for a drive?" he asked conversationally, slipping on a heather gray t-shirt. His hair was still wet and damp spots showed almost immediately across his shoulders. "I'm not really feeling Kansas."

"You're not, huh?" Dean asked.

"Nah. I figure we can start to head closer to Bobby's. I called about a transmission for the Impala, he said he'd pull some strings for us. Might have it in a few weeks."

"That'd be nice. I need to take a shower before we leave."

Sam laughed. "Don't bother yet. I used all the hot water and it's a freaking slip'n'slide in there. I should get my clothes off the floor, shit." He went to the bathroom, still wearing just his t-shirt and white briefs, acting like it was totally normal, acting like he _ever_ used up all the hot water or splashed water on the floor like a kid. He was such a good liar now. If Dean didn't know better, he'd think Sam's clothes really were just soaked with water and not dried blood.

While Sam was busy in the bathroom, Dean got up and started getting his things together. He hadn't unpacked much in the first place; he rolled up some shirts and poked around under the bed trying to find the pair to a sneaker. He had the duffel all zipped and ready to go by the time Sam came out with his clothes wadded into a ball and stuffed into a plastic Wal-Mart bag. Dean turned away and took a long slug of his coffee instead of trying to pretend like he didn't know.

"Whaddya think, Nebraska by nightfall?" Sam asked cheerily, the sounds of his bag of clothes being tucked into his duffel louder than his words.

"Sounds great. Haven't been on the road in a long time."

"The transmission should hold out, yeah?" Sam continued. Dean closed his eyes on a wince and wished Sam would stop _talking_, stop making it harder on him. The more Sam acted like nothing was wrong, the more Dean desperately wanted to believe it. "It only just started acting up."

"Yeah. It'll be fine."

Sam was silent for a few, but it was thoughtful, meaningful. He came back with, "You wanna drive?" and Dean nearly dropped his coffee to the floor.

"Is the Pope Catholic?" Dean cracked, only a little unsteady. He turned around to see Sam holding the keys, twirling them around on his fingers like a taunt. Sam grinned, dimples flashing, and tossed them at him.

\--

It wasn't until Dean saw the sign, 'Thanks for visiting Topeka!', that he realized he had no clue where they'd been staying in Kansas. He remembered leaving Stull and figured they were staying somewhere near Lawrence, but hadn't realized they'd driven the other way, to Topeka. It wasn't that far from Lawrence, thirty miles maybe, but Dean felt the solid reality of those miles as he guided the Impala onto the freeway. It felt like he was going too fast, the road slick beneath them, but when he checked the speedometer, he was going exactly the limit.

"You all right?" Sam asked carefully, not doing a very good job of pretending to check the map. He hadn't stopped staring at Dean since they'd left the motel and climbed into the car.

"I'm dandy, Sam."

"You wanna listen to the radio?" Sam asked, leading and still casual.

"If I want to listen to music, I'll turn it on myself, all right?" He worked his hands over the steering wheel, trying to get comfortable, trying to get back into the swing of it. How long had it been since he'd driven? Months, if the time below passed the same as above. At least weeks if it didn't. It felt like learning to walk again. Dean didn't like learning it on a busy freeway during commute hour, but he'd take his freedoms where he could get them.

"We need gas."

"I'll get it when we get out of the city."

"That's what I was going to suggest," Sam said, all seriousness as he folded down the map and stuck it in the glove compartment.

He battled the traffic admirably, not whizzing along and cutting people off like every asshole in a compact car seemed born to do. He even _signaled_. When they cleared the city proper, he took the nearest exit with a gas station. It was a heinously overpriced Shell station, but Jeff Watson's credit card didn't have an opinion on gas gouging.

"Hey, you can pay at the pump," Sam said when they pulled up, acting fascinated.

"Yeah, isn't it amazing? I hear they have phones without wires, too, imagine that." He shot Sam a what-the-hell-have-you-been-smoking? look, barely a glance, and unbuckled his seat-belt.

"I've got it," Sam said hurriedly, opening his door with a creak. "I don't know if all of your cards are working."

"Um, okay?" Dean watched in the rearview as Sam went around to the back of the car and unscrewed the gas cap. It was a wonder he could see what he was doing; he kept looking over his shoulder and staring out at the parking lot in front of him, jumpy as a rabbit. Dean opened his own door and stepped out. "I want a Slurpee, you got any cash?"

Sam jerked his head up and nodded. "Yeah, hold on a minute, I wanna go in too."

Dean sighed and leaned against the hood. "I thought you wanted to pay at the pump?"

"Mmmn," Sam said noncommittally, eyeing the pump as the numbers climbed. "What kind of Slurpee did you want?"

"I'm thinkin' cherry. Maybe cola, if they have it."

"Oh," Sam said, trying to sound interested and failing.

Dean snorted. "Dude, you don't have to hold my hand in the store, give it up already."

"I'm the one with the cash, Dean," he said stubbornly. "And I wanna look around too, okay?"

"Fine."

\--

They got to Yankton, South Dakota _well_ before nightfall, both of them sweaty and irritated and needing to piss. Dean found an EconoLodge and turned into its parking lot silently, too peeved at Sam to ask if it was good enough. They'd spent most the day deciding where to stop. Dean wanted to push all the way to Bobby's and Sam just kept saying _take it slow, you'll wear yourself out, I wanna stop in Nebraska, be careful of the transmission_. He nearly ran them into a semi during the third round of attempted arguments, Sam's whammy making him unable to form the words, frustration mounting. He figured cooling the fuck down and letting Sam have his smothering way was probably the best thing for both of them. If Dean got too worked up, he might come out with something about the guy back at the motel.

Sam didn't remark on their arrival, wordlessly getting out the Impala and following Dean in to the office like some sort of bodyguard. Despite being worn through with tension and the beginning of a migraine, Dean smiled at the woman behind the desk. Sam did most of the talking, not that there was much; he slapped the card down on the counter and requested two doubles, farthest away from the freeway, please.

Dean grabbed his duffel from the backseat, Sam getting his from the other side, both of them pointedly not looking at each other, intent on their zippers and double-checking the contents of the bags. It was only slightly ridiculous. Dean tried to be the better man and mumbled something about dinner later, and Sam shrugged jerkily.

"Let me guess, we're gonna order something?" Dean asked, exasperated. He slammed the car door and grimaced at the creak and the harsh sound of the metal as it closed.

"Probably."

"There's a Denny's across the street," Dean said, pointing exaggeratedly, "and a Burger King and a Taco Time. But you wanna order Chinese takeout for the fifteen billionth time, huh? What's the matter, don't wanna be seen with me in public?"

Sam's face shifted through several expressions, most of them impossible to read, before settling on stubborn irritation. "Let's get inside."

It reminded him of Dad, who never dressed them down in public if they were acting out of line. He usually gave them dark looks that said _you're getting it handed to you once we're alone_, tight clamp of a hand on Dean's shoulder, mouth a firm line in the face of Sam's hot refusals to comply with simple requests.

Sam trailed him into the motel room, a depressingly beige sight when Dean opened the door. Two beds. A TV. A table. Some lamps. A window.

"Wow," Dean exclaimed, sarcastic. "Can't get rooms like this in Kansas, can you."

Sam closed the door and locked it. "Whatever. Kansas isn't exactly my favorite state."

Dean had to concede that. He didn't do it aloud. He dumped his duffel onto the floor and flopped onto his bed, kicking off his boots and hoping they landed where Sam might trip over them.

Sam started to unpack, methodical, clean clothes in his dresser and dirty staying in the duffel. It was the first time he'd unpacked like that, like he used to; in the last few motels, he'd lived out of his duffel. Dean listened for the tell-tale crinkle of the plastic Wal-Mart bag but it never came. Sam must have ditched the bloody clothes somehow.

He turned the TV on so he didn't have to think about it, Oprah interviewing whatever guru or celebrity she'd booked for the day. Sam didn't have much clean laundry, so he sat down on his own bed and watched TV with him, both of them acting like nothing was wrong. It made Dean's skin crawl.

\--

There was no warning when Sam picked the lock to the bathroom door, two nights later. The bathroom counter cut lines into Dean's stomach as he leaned in over it, breath steaming up the mirror, feet slipping as he restlessly tried to find a better angle. Dean hadn't heard him calling out, if he had been, so the shadow of Sam suddenly appearing behind Dean in the reflection shocked a groan from him.

It wasn't like Dean could stand there and keep doing it, keep stretching himself open. He swore and hunched in his shoulders, pulling out his fingers so fast they made his ass burn. He wondered if Sam was watching him stretched out like that, and didn't bother to check in the mirror to see for sure. He knew what Sam's face would be like, sad like he'd failed and Dean was _dying_ again.

"Why are you doing this?" Sam asked, the powers so easily let loose with, although he'd been noticeably careful to speak without real questions or demands over the last two days.

"It didn't just go _away_, Sam," Dean snapped, hands shaking as he went for a towel. "Just because you made me stop the dreams, I'm, I always want it, always want to be fucked, like I'm going crazy." He managed to get the towel around his waist, a paltry barrier, but something at least to give him the illusion. Sam didn't stop looking at him, shell-shocked and sallow, even with the towel on and firmly knotted. It prickled his skin and made him remember the way Sam stared at his sutures and obsessively reapplied ointment until Dean slapped his hands away and told him to stop with the guilt and let them heal.

"_God_."

"The dreams, I guess they were just part of it." He was babbling, wishing Sam would make him shut up again. "It's, I can't make it stop, Sammy, I'm sorry."

Sam didn't look at him. "Go -- go sit down in the other room, okay, Dean?"

Dean went. He couldn't tell if it was Sam making him or if he was simply out of options. He sat down, the sheets on the bed cool underneath his legs where they weren't covered with the towel. He stared down at the carpet pattern, at how long his toes looked compared to the rest of his foot. Sam came out a few minutes later, his face and some ends of his hair wet from where he'd splashed himself with water from the sink. He didn't look like he'd been crying, which was a relief mainly because Dean didn't know how to deal with crying. Before hell, Dean remembered, it stumped him then too.

Sam sat directly opposite him on the edge of the other bed, a mirror of the same positions they'd been in some days before. It felt like they were in some sort of loop, repeating the same horrible shit over and over, only it got worse every time. He fidgeted, his too-long legs crossing and uncrossing, knee jiggling, and he rested his arm over it before he realized he was too wound up to do that either.

"How can I help you?" Sam asked, barely a croak. "If-- do you want me to erase all the memories of hell? I think I can do it, Dean."

"We don't know what that'd do to me, Sammy, it might turn me into some sort of vegetable or something. I'm in bad enough shape as it is, we can't go messin' around with something that big. And you've got to stop whammying me, man, that's not helping." It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Sam he knew the real reason why they left Kansas, that he wasn't the only one losing it, but he was afraid of how Sam might react. He didn't know what the long-term effects of whammy were, if you could do it too much, if it caused irreversible damage. He didn't know how a mind as warped as his would handle it. He didn't know if he could stand acknowledging what Sam had done.

Sam sort of groaned, his head dropping to his chest and his hands coming up to scrub at his eyes. He did the same thing when he was on a research bender or doing something vital during a hunt, when he was so tired he could hardly function and the coffee was useless. Dean figured Sam hadn't been sleeping much. "I know, I know. Fuck. I'm not going to do it again. I was just trying to stop you from. Whatever. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to do it again."

"Okay. That's. That's good, right?"

Sam laughed somewhat hysterically. He shook his head too hard, like he was trying to clear it, and rubbed at his temples again. Dean wanted to bat his hands away from his face and make him stay still because he knew it was only making Sam feel worse. "Using my powers, it's just another thing that's wrong, my stopping isn't going to fix it." He looked at Dean with earnest, despairing eyes, and Dean resisted the urge to snort in the face of such denial and obviousness.

"Uh, _duh_, Sam."

"Like, why -- why are you doing this to yourself? Why can't you stop?" Sam's voice broke on stop, and Dean tensed momentarily, the sound reminding him of the way Sam's voice went when he used his powers. False alarm.

"If I knew that, man, I wouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Sam nodded, as if this was some great observation Dean was gifting him with, rather than stating the obvious. When he speaks, it's slow, almost patronizing, but his eyes are gleaming with intent. "We'll figure it out, Dean. I swear to God. Just. You have to talk to me, you can't keep locking yourself up and doing this, man, it's sick."

"So whenever I feel like," he couldn't finish it or find a phrase that would save either of them from a wince, "I'm supposed to open up and, what, have happy sharing time?" He tried for a smirk, but it trembled unconvincingly on his face, which felt numb.

The typical pissed off Sam Winchester thinning of lips and narrowing of eyes followed Dean's attempt at smart-ass. It was a respite from the weird mix of horror and guilt he'd been practically boring into Dean's flesh. Typical, too, Sam acted like Dean hadn't said anything. "Do you think you can sleep tonight or do you need something?"

Dean snorted, bristling at the thought of taking more painpills or whatever Sam had in his arsenal. The first day or so back, Sam gave him stuff, trying to look after him and dull the ache of the stitches and the memories of hell, but Dean hated feeling that foggy and unaware. _Hated_. "I sleep fine."

The curve of Sam's mouth went wry, but there were still tense lines at the corners. "And why do I have a hard time believing that?"

"I'm fine. I'll sleep fine. You don't have to hold a bedside vigil."

He knew he was lying when he said he'd be able to sleep; Sam was awake and full of nervous energy, which obnoxiously kept Dean up at the best of times. He was up every night waiting for Sam to sneak out again, waiting for him to sneak back in covered in blood. He sighed and tried to focus on the encompassing dark of the back of his eyelids, but all night, he heard Sam rustling in the sheets and his too-loud breathing through his nose.

Maybe he could talk Sam into taking his own suggestion, popping an Ambien before bed or something. Hell, if Sam wasn't such a self-denying yuppie and would bite his head off for bringing it up, Dean would tell him to smoke some pot. Dean entertained himself with thoughts of Sam at Stanford, wrinkling his nose at every joint or bong passed his way. He probably tried to be cool about it once or twice, knowing Sam, tried to _assimilate_, but hacked up a lung and went home bitter about it.

He wasn't sure if he slept any, if he just dozed, but when he opened his eyes again, sunrise was peeking in through the window and painting the room with garish pastels. Birds chirped, someone with a seriously blown muffler was gunning it through the parking lot like a jackass.

"Morning, sunshine," Dean muttered, turning his head and not at all surprised to find Sam looking at him, wide awake.

\--

They spent the day pretending like everything was normal, and God but it made Dean's shoulders feel fifty tons lighter that they did. Sam wouldn't let him leave the motel room again. Not even when Dean watched classic metal and hard rock videos on VH1 for an hour at top volume in protest. Sam did look like he felt bad, and Dean milked that for all it was worth. He pestered Sam into ordering breakfast from the greasiest delivery place he could find, then PayPerView wrestling that would come on at eight (he was thinking ahead) even though Sam was paranoid about charging things to the room. He'd just finished his fourth cup of coffee and was contemplating new ways to test Sam's good will when Sam threw a newspaper at him.

"Here, look through the obits before I smash your head in with the television." Sam jerked his head toward the screen, still blasting videos that were the closest thing to Sam's kryptonite that Dean had ever found. Dean was torn between hysteria at the look on Sam's face and supreme annoyance that he couldn't appreciate the brilliance of Damn Yankees.

Dean obligingly turned the TV down a few decibels. "We lookin' for hunts?" he asked, surprised, opening the pages.

"Yeah, it gives us something to do while we cool our heels." Sam was looking through the headlines of a different newspaper. "See if you see anything that looks specific to demonic possession."

Dean's eyebrows raised. "You mean like 'Mary Lou Walker died today at the highly conspicuous age of 32, found covered in sulfur next to animal sacrifices, the room decorated with Satanic sigils?'"

"Shut up and read, Dean." There was no heat in it.

Minutes passed in what would have been silence if Poison hadn't been wailing in the background. Dean scanned through two pages of obits, reading freaking boring, and normal deaths, all old ladies who played bridge or old men who enjoyed fishing with their grandsons.

"Any luck?" Sam asked.

Dean lifted his head. "Naw, all heart attacks and cancer, nothing exciting."

Sam flicked his finger at the thin paper, thoughtful. "Might have something. A shooting, guy's riddled with holes, but there aren't any bullets at the scene. And none were found during the autopsy, either."

"Sounds fishy. Where at?"

"Texas somewhere," Sam said, distracted, rereading the article with too much intent to be for real.

It dawned on Dean that if Sam wasn't letting him out of the motel for burgers, he sure as shit wasn't letting him out to hunt. "So, what, are we just collecting this stuff and saving it for a rainy day?" he demanded.

"Or we can send it over to Bobby. I'm sure he'd love a trip to Texas, this time of year," Sam said, his tone light and teasing. Dean scowled at him.

"Fuck that." He shoved the newspaper away. "Why don't you buy me a coloring book and some freaking crayons while you're at it?"

Sam looked up at him, but he didn't take the bait. "This is important, Dean. What we do is _important_, even if it's looking at obits and collecting data. We can't hunt right now, but we can keep up with the shit going on, prepare for when we can hunt again."

"I'm _fine_, Sam, okay, I know I'm messed up right now, but I swear to God if I don't get back to hunting, you're going to have to send me somewhere with padded walls."

"I'm not sending you out there like this, Dean," Sam was still speaking as though he was perfectly calm, but Dean could see his knuckles turning white as he clenched his hands. "Live with it."

In response, Dean threw the obits at Sam's head. It was perfectly reasonable; wasn't like paper was going to do any _damage_. "Yeah, well, you can do all the busywork, I'm going to watch some fucking TV."

He turned up the TV again, only now the channel had moved onto some crapass reality thing. Dean channel surfed to find something just as obnoxious as 80s hair bands. "Hey, Beaches. Sammy, should I bust you out some tissues?" He still sounded angry, furious even, but Beaches was too good to resist; he glanced over to see Sam's reaction.

Sam sat stock-still on the bed, frozen and staring down at the newspaper in front of him, none of his usual pen tapping or lip-chewing; none of the million habits Dean had cataloged over the years of watching Sam get his research on.

"You find something?"

Sam's eyes darted up to his and then away. He nodded, slow and reticent, but didn't offer any more information. Dean huffed and dragged his ass off the bed to go see what the hell had Sam so spooked.

He noticed a picture first, a school picture of a tiny little redheaded girl with a huge gap between her front teeth. The front page article beneath was long. Alexa Morris, 7, it read, was found dead with her entire family, their throats slit. No signs of a break-in and no apparent motive.

"Lilith?" Dean asked, although he had a pretty good idea.

"Looks like."

"What is _with_ her and the little girls?" He tugged the paper towards him so he could read the rest of the article. All the facts screamed Lilith in big, neon letters, and that was enough to convince him. "D'you think this was more R&amp;R?"

"No. I think she does this every time she hops a body."

"Not exactly the subtle type, is she?" Dean said flatly. "Although why should she care if people catch on, if she's supposed to be some demon badass."

"Right."

Sam's face darkened and closed in on itself, the fingers of his left hand fiddling idly across his bottom lip. "Nothin' we can do, she's probably long gone and onto the next by now." He tried not to sound too obviously placating, but he didn't think Sam noticed what he was saying to begin with.

"I'll call Bobby about that shooting in Texas," Sam muttered eventually.

Dean sat back down on his bed and clicked away from Bette Midler. He thought about doing some pushups to kill time and make sure his body didn't start to go soft, but the scars on his chest looked like they'd open up at the exertion.

"Tell Bobby I said hi."

\--

Dean's bladder woke him up a few minutes after midnight, which he wasn't too pleased with, since he'd gone once already before bed. He shoved off his covers and moved through the dark past fuzzy furniture-shapes toward the bathroom.

A light clicked on, harsh and blinding, the abruptness of it hitting Dean's eyes hard. He nearly fell on his ass but caught himself against the wall, crashing against it totally without grace. He winced and blinked past blotches in his vision to see Sam propped up on his elbows in bed and looking just as pained as Dean, but for a hugely different reason. Sam didn't have to say a word; everything dark and horrified was easy to read on his face.

"I've just gotta piss, Sammy," Dean said, torn between sheepish and annoyed. His chest itched and he scratched it, waiting for Sam to stop looking at him like that.

Sam sighed and turned over, body huge under his flimsy bedcovers. One socked foot poked out the end of the blankets and over the edge of the bed; the picture he made would ordinarily amuse the fuck out of Dean. "Turn off my light when you come back out." As much of a warning to hurry up as Sam could bring himself to give.

When he closed the door behind him,‭ ‬he automatically went to lock it,‭ ‬but he couldn't‭; ‬the mechanism was broken.‭ ‬He looked over at Sam.‭ ‬Sam must have done it while Dean slept, because Dean checked the door after Sam busted in on him last night, and it'd been fine then, no repair needed.

He let his hand fall away from the doorknob and focused on the press low in his stomach. He pissed for a long time, dick at half mast in his loose grip, and Dean couldn't feel annoyed over not being able to jerk off. Not with Sam's stupidly upset face dancing in front of him like it was actually there.

He shook off and zipped back up, flushed the toilet and let the seat back down, polite habit that he never could quite shake. Sam was out there waiting, so he didn't spare a glance in the mirror or a rinse at the sink. He found Sam in the same position as before, down to the foot hanging off the bed. The line of his back was tense.

Above Sam's bed, Dean stood and thumbed over the light switch.

"Get some sleep, Sammy," he whispered, voice harsh in the darkness.

\--

The next day was particularly bad. Dean felt like ripping Sam's throat with his teeth would have been a brilliant idea. Sam, with his usual uncanny ability to press Dean's buttons, hovered even more than usual. He seemed anxious, snappish, and he argued with absolutely everything Dean said. At lunchtime Dean wanted Mexican, but Sam called up a diner and ordered him a chicken Caesar salad. He literally got red in the face until Dean gave in and ate, the standing order not to fight pushing him bodily to comply.

A ten minute drive would have cooled Dean down, just enough to get his head clear. A _walk_ would have done the same, but Sam furiously shot him down as soon as the word "out" was uttered.

"You let me drive before, I don't see what the big fucking deal is."

"That was _necessary_!"

The words _Yeah, we ran because you killed a guy, Sammy_ built up in his chest but he couldn't spit them out. Cue another argument, one-sided; Sam brayed like a horse and Dean fumed in silence because everything that would have come out of his mouth would have been incendiary and definitely counted as fighting. Twice he had to stop himself from bringing up Sam's encounter at the motel.

By dinner, they weren't speaking beyond perfunctory "change the channel"s and "pass me the newspaper"s. Sam had dinner delivered with lunch earlier, and Dean suffered through a weird wrap thing that had gone soggy in the motel's mini-fridge. He ate it and watched Sam eat his own dinner one-handed, the other busy pecking at his laptop, brow furrowed and jaw taut even with chewing.

"You know, it would make more sense to do a store run and keep shit stocked rather than ordering every meal. Since it's so _unsafe_."

The glare Sam shot him was murderous. He swallowed half-chewed food and licked the front of his teeth. "Thanks for the suggestion," Sam said, thick and sarcastic, _asshole_ heavily implied but unspoken. Dean opened his mouth to reply, but Sam slammed his laptop closed, heading him off. "I'm going to take a shower."

\--

The idea struck him like a bolt of lightning, leaving him reeling. He came out of the shower to find Sam napping, face smashed against the pillow and nose bent at an odd angle. _I could just leave_, he thought. He could get in the Impala and drive and clear his head, go west or down south and let Sam get his shit together. He didn't have to stay cooped up in a claustrophobic motel room, Sam breathing down his neck and both of them about to snap. He could just _go_.

He felt guilty about it immediately, a rush of feeling so intense it nearly bowled him over. Sam's face was so slack and worry-free in sleep, brow smooth like a sculpture, like he was a little boy again. It hit him right where it counted. He couldn't leave Sam. Not after all of it. He couldn't do that, not like Sam had, and this would be _worse_. This would be sneaking off and dumping his phone and staying under the radar and running away like a coward. Dean wasn't a coward.

Instead he went to Sam's second duffel, the one he kept dreamcatchers and ritual stones in, and he found the satchels of herbs and dried plants at the bottom. Most of them were common and harmless, stuff he'd picked up in kitschy New Age shops, but he had some heavy shit, too. Dean found the Valerian easily enough; the problem with Valerian, though, was that it stunk. It smelled like rank feet and it'd be impossible to miss even if Dean put it in some seriously strong booze. There was Kava, too, but it wasn't strong enough. He held a satchel in his hand for a moment more, debating, but Sam's huffing sigh made him rush to put it back. No herbs. They weren't going to get the job done. He needed something strong but virtually undetectable, something Sam wouldn't immediately connect to Dean once he woke up from a drugged sleep.

He zipped up Sam's duffel and looked around the room helplessly. He wondered if there was anything in the journal, but that would be too easily suspected, and he doubted Dad wrote an entry titled Ways to Drug Someone So You Can Sneak Out. Dean's thighs ached from bending over and his breath was starting to come faster, and he thought he should give up and forget about it, too much opportunity for error.

His eyes landed on the first-aid kit, sitting next to Sam's laptop on the table. Sam brought it out for him from the car when he had a headache a few days ago, and Dean knew it had a whole fucking pharmacy in there; opiates and antibiotics and a variety of ointments, even spray for athlete's foot. And sleeping pills. Ambien, he remembered. He'd been asleep not long after they kicked in, dead to the world.

He needed Sam to sleep soundly, solidly, not waking at the slightest noise. It'd be good for him, too, since he'd been getting the same patchy sleep Dean was. He didn't figure on being gone all that long, either, so there'd be no time for him to worry. Dean crossed the room and opened the kit, trying to be quiet with his movements, not wanting the bottle to rattle. He shook out two of the little pills and pocketed them. There was a bottle of Valium, too, and he grabbed some in case that seemed like a better idea, come time.

"Hey, Sammy." Dean made himself go over and shake Sam's shoulder; he needed Sam able to sleep that night to begin with, and napping wouldn't help. "I'm bored. Wake up."

\--

Sam watched a Jeopardy rerun with his usual competitive enthusiasm. He knew most of the science, law and assorted history categories, which made him unbearably smug every time the show was on. Dean watched him mock the contestants and smugly shout answers until a pop culture category came up in Double Jeopardy, and he started kicking some serious ass in his own right. Sam threw Fritos at him when his score started to rack up, Dean laughing and throwing them back.

"It's not my fault you never pick up a magazine, Sammy," he chided.

"I read magazines!" Sam argued. "I just don't read _trash_."

Dean gestured to the screen, where all three contestants were standing around looking blank; the answer was What is Warner Brothers?, and not a single one looked like they'd seen a movie in decades. "Apparently reading trash comes in handy on Jeopardy."

Sam smiled. "Apparently."

The time buzzer sounded and Trebek proved Dean right -- he added another thousand to his tally and smirked back at Sam.

"I'm thirsty," Sam declared when the show went to commercial. "Did you drink all the beer?"

"No." They had groceries delivered a few days ago and split a six pack as soon as it came. There were some Bud Longnecks and some Corona left in the fridge, and Dean had some JB in his bag, waiting. "Grab me one, hey?"

Sam bent over, almost comically considering his size, to dig through the mini-fridge. The microwave on top tipped ominously, but Sam was quick. He came up with two Buds and lobbed one at Dean. He opened it with his ring and downed half of it in a go, wetting his parched mouth and hopefully helping with his nerves. He didn't want to drink too much; his plan was to go out for a few beers, shoot some pool, take in fresh air and stretch his legs. Try and feel like a human again. Getting plastered before he left the motel room wasn't smart.

Sam won the game between the two of them, but barely; the dude who won the actual episode had a higher score, and Dean came in right under Sam, the other contestants leagues away. They whooped and Sam's cheeks were already spotted with circles of red when he turned to Dean and asked him to bring another beer.

\--

Ultimately he went for the Valium. One, he figured it wouldn't be as obvious and strong as a sleeping pill. The Ambien had knocked him on his ass, and he'd been groggy for a day after. Two, it dissolved fast when Dean slipped it into Sam's Corona. He watched Sam drink the beer, watched him suck messily on a lime and smile at Dean with drunken humor. The pit of his stomach roiled with guilt. He'd thought when he first dug the Valium out of his pocket and put it down the neck of the bottle that Sam's order not to fight him might clash, that he might freeze and have to put the Valium back, but there'd been nothing to stop him. Sam said _don't fight me_, after all; not _don't drug me_ or _don't do something I wouldn't like_. Not even _don't disobey me_.

The guilt didn't stop him from pouring Sam a shot of JB for good measure; Sam passed out hard when he mixed his booze, and any extra help was golden. Sam got drunker and drunker, his eyes drooping into heavy-lidded slits, laughing and falling back against his bed.

"Jeeeeze, how much have I had to--- to drink, Dean? I think I could have 'nother."

At‭ ‬9:17,‭ ‬when it was dark and the crickets were singing,‭ ‬Sam fell asleep open-mouthed and fully-clothed, drooling onto his pillow. Dean put away the booze and pulled a blanket up to Sam's shoulders. He changed into his favorite jeans and Carhartt, grabbed the keys to the Impala and slid on his jacket before the nasty feeling in his stomach could stop him altogether.

He had to drive a ways for a good bar, not just a local dive with peanuts and grumpy old men sitting around swapping miseries. The tavern he pulled into was middle of the road, but it was busy, filled with loud music and laughter that poured out onto the street. Neon lit the front of the building brightly, made it look inviting. He parked and made his way inside.

The music wasn't half bad; regular jukebox shit. A few girls already three sheets to the wind were dancing amongst themselves, swaying in tight skirts and tanktops. Dean gave them all a broad smile and they grinned back, whispering and pointing. Some of the women sitting at tables noticed him too, when he slid up to the bar and ordered a shot. It looked like they might come closer, so he settled in and waited. It was all old hat, coming back to him easy as breathing.

One of the girls sidled up to him when his whiskey came. She squeezed between him and the guy seated in the stool to his right, breasts pushed up nearly to her neck, the scalloped edge of her bra just visible beyond her shirt. "Hi, I'm Claire."

"Hi, Claire, I'm Dean." He lifted his shot glass to give her a little salute, but he hadn't realized his hands were shaking; liquid sloshed over the edge and dribbled down his arm, kind of ruining his whole move. "Uh."

She just giggled and pressed a few napkins at him. "Had a few already?"

He hardly heard her, concentrating instead on soaking up the whiskey. "Yeah. I guess. Had a bad day."

She clucked and hummed in sympathy, leaning in closer and touching his arm with her manicured hand. "Me, too, Dean. It was just awful."

His hand was still shaking. He bit his lip and crumpled up the sodden napkins. "Hey, I think I'm gonna shoot some pool, you gonna stick around for a while?"

She frowned at his sudden shift, but covered it well. Lips curved into a smile, and even under the bar lights Dean could see she needed a few rounds with whitening toothpaste. Not like that ever stopped him before. "Sure. I'll be here. Go have fun."

He nodded and slugged the shot in one go, fast so he wouldn't spill again. It went down in a hot swallow, tingling and too strong. Dean sucked in a breath and smiled at her.

There were three pool tables crammed in the back. All three were busy. One of them looked like regulars who were duking it out, serious as surgery, glowering and concentrating too hard. The second was filled with a group of girls probably on a night out, fumbling the cue but having a good time. Finally there was a handful of college aged guys. Probably frats, stupid hats on at strange angles and designer shirts fashionably distressed. Dean went for the frats.

"You mind if I watch?" Dean asked, standing back enough so they didn't think he was trying to be a smartass.

"Naw, go ahead." One of them broke from their conversation to gift Dean with an answer, shrugging.

Dean shrugged back and stepped closer, keeping his expression friendly but neutral. They weren't playing for money, only for fun, but he figured a few rounds in that might change. It seemed like only half of them were playing, two to a team, the rest standing back and entertaining themselves by commenting on their technique. One of the guys wasn't half bad and Dean filed him away as a potential mark; he had a head full of curly blonde hair that vaguely reminded Dean of a poodle.

"You're a little too comfortable fondling that stick," one of them laughed at poodle boy.

He raised his eyes and smirked back at his friend. "Fuck you. Don't put your gay issues on me."

They all laughed and Dean smiled indulgently, but the group suddenly went awkward and silent, like they'd remembered something. He narrowed his eyes and tried to figure it out; maybe they remembered he was there and felt weird with a stranger hanging around and listening, but in Dean's experience, some punkass kids didn't give a damn who heard what. He landed on the answer when he noticed one of the guys not playing, sitting off on a stool with a beer clutched in his hands. He had a bright red shirt, frosted blonde hair, and looked decidedly uncomfortable. Dean's gaydar went nuts. So, yeah, token gay guy probably didn't take kindly to fag jokes.

Poodle boy blew a really easy shot and they all went back to groaning and jeering. He looked put off, stared at the table really hard like it contained some secret he had to unlock. Dean leaned in. "You overextended your arm on it, that's all."

He looked up when Dean spoke, but instead of nodding or whatever, he got pissy. "Yeah, thanks for your unwanted opinion."

Dean choked on a disbelieving laugh. And Sam thought _he_ was touchy. "Just tryin' to help your game, buddy."

Poodle snorted and went back to ignoring him. The red shirted guy spoke up suddenly. "Dude was right, Sean, you crazy overextended your elbow. Next time keep it tight."

"You wanna play?" he asked, belligerent, and Dean figured he was pretty drunk. He pointed the cue at red shirt. "Be my fucking guest."

"I'll play you," Dean offered casually to the gay guy, because no way would Sean-poodle-boy let Dean whip his ass and keep calm about it. "When you all are done here."

Red shirt smiled back and raised his beer in greeting. "Okay."

They had to wait while Sean crashed and burned, seemingly ruffled by the critique and Dean's audience. He finally lost and stomped off to the bar to drown his sorrows in more beer and sympathetic bar flies, and Dean took up his own cue stick while red shirt set down his beer. He turned back around, working the chalk over the tip, just as the guy stood up. And fuck, he towered. He was tall like Sam, had to unfurl to his full height like an accordion. Dean's breath hitched.

"I'm Dean," he said.

"I'm Bailey," he said, smiling wide but hesitant, like he was shy. Or pretending to be. Dean owned a mirror, and he was used to all manner of flirting. He smiled back and set down the chalk. "You wanna break?"

Dean shrugged. "Sure." He gathered up all the balls and put them in the rack, practiced. After he broke, he sunk striped and called it.

It was a mediocre game. Bailey had a fair amount of technical talent, but he over-thought every move, didn't work on instinct and picked impressive shots he didn't always make over easy ones. Dean beat him even though his chest ached every time he leaned over the table and his hands kept shaking on the cue. When he sunk the eight, he felt Bailey's eyes on his back, the rise of his ass in his jeans. His cock swelled with interest; that interest grew even stronger when he stood to meet Bailey's eyes in victory and had to look‭ up‭‬.‭ ‬He was huge,‭ ‬skinny but well-built,‭ ‬all leg.‭

"Good game. Loser buys the winner a drink?" It seemed like he was trying to make a statement, but he was either too shy or too bad at flirting to make it anything other than a tentative question.

"Absolutely." Dean clapped him on the back, mostly because it's what he remembered doing from before. Before he wouldn't have been awkwardly shifting his body so some random gay guy couldn't see his hard on, but he'd work with what he had.

"What's your poison?" he asked as they made their way over to the bar.

"Eh, I'm easy," Dean said, fully aware of the double meaning. Bailey's eyes widened a fraction; he either couldn't believe his luck, or couldn't believe someone was so oblivious. "Wanna do shots?"

"Uh, sure."

When they got to the counter, Dean saw Claire a few stools down, eyeing him. He looked away quickly, not trying to let on that he'd seen her watching him; he wasn't in the mood to make pointless small talk with some chick in a bar. He hadn't been when he came in; he'd been trying so hard to be like before, the hot guy in the leather jacket with a nice car, good for a fuck in the back seat. All he wanted was to do some shots, chill out and relish his time away from the motel.

It wasn't really wanted he wanted, not _all_. Dean shivered and clenched his teeth, resolute not to acknowledge it or let it go further, when Bailey's arm brushed his sleeve.

\--

They snuck into the staff bathroom; this one was a wide, handi-capped accessible room with one toilet and one sink, no stalls. Dean snicked the lock shut behind him and let Bailey push him against the wall to grope at his ass. Dean's nose smashed against the chipping white paint. He groaned; Bailey had big hands and he squeezed accordingly big handfuls. Dean could feel the pull of his fingers through the layer of denim and underwear, hard enough that probably he would have bruises later in the night.

The smell of antibacterial soap and bleach weren't strong enough to overpower the tang of urine underneath. Dean braced his forearms against the wall, fists in clenches; waiting, he felt his mouth fill up with spit and had to swallow compulsively.

"Fuck me," he whispered, so quiet it was nearly lost to the wall. "Fuck."

Bailey moaned, a soft noise with an edge of whining. "You want it bad, don't you?" He reached around Dean and pulled his hips back, slotting their bodies together where it counted. His cock was a long line against the crack of Dean's ass and he humped against it, shameless. "Hold on." His fingers slipped to the belt on Dean's pants and got it open, then his zipper and his boxers.

"Fuck my ass," Dean hissed, "c'mon."

"Jesus, quiet," he warned, which was bullshit because they were in a _bar_ with loud music thumping the wall Dean was pressed against. He could scream down the house and no one would hear.

"Put your dick in me," he said, even louder. "Wanna feel it."

"Lemme get a condom." He pulled his hips away to get one out of his front pocket -- what a freaking boyscout. Dean heard Bailey unzip his own jeans and then the slick sounds of him jacking his dick; he pushed it down and the tip of it hit the bare skin of Dean's ass. Dean growled and spread his legs, not in the mood for teasing. "Jesus _Christ_." There was another pause while he went to put the condom on, but then he was back, latex-covered cock brushing right up against Dean's skin, pre-lubed so it felt wet.

"Fuckin' huge, huh, gonna put that big cock in my ass?"

"So fucking hot," Bailey breathed, the warmth of his mouth close to Dean's ear. He rocked against him for just a moment, a slipslide, and his arms went around Dean's waist. Then further up, fingers curling under Dean's shirt to press against the flat of his belly, inches away from thick, formerly fatal scars. Dean froze.

"Mmm, no," he said, and slapped away Bailey's hands before they got any higher. "Don't like it."

"'Kay," he said, dropped his hands down to Dean's hips, apparently not bothered.

Just when Dean was about to bitch at him for not moving things along, Bailey's big hands went from his hips to either side of his ass, massaging the cheeks. Dean's breath came in on an anticipating whoosh and Bailey pulled him apart, showed off his hole, and Dean's cock pulsed a bead of precome.

"Put it in," he managed from between gritted teeth.

Bailey was smart enough not to ask him if he was sure, if he needed _time_; he moved one of his hands to his cock and kept the other holding Dean open. The fat head of it started to force its way in, a burn so hot it almost felt cold, the same way hot water did. Dean gasped something unintelligible and rested his forehead against the wall.

As his cock slipped in further, Bailey groaned out an exaggerated _fuuuuck_, fingers spreading Dean's ass open even more. "Too fuckin' tight, I don't know if I can fit it all."

Dean gritted his teeth and shoved back, taking another couple inches in. "Stop pussying around and fuck me."

He did, all the way in on a sharp thrust that had his balls up tight against the bottom of Dean's ass. He waited a minute before starting to slide back out, slow, not enough lube to move easily.

"Hard, do it hard."

"I don't--"

"I can take it, _fuck_."

Bailey went faster, harder, gaining momentum easily. His balls slapped against Dean's ass and Dean lost himself to it, letting out an almost constant stream of moans and _harder, harder_. It drove Bailey on until Dean's knees and elbows were knocking against the wall painfully with every thrust in, tossed around like a stick in a storm, filled up and it was perfect but it wasn't enough, wasn't hard enough, deep enough.

"I can't--" Bailey panted almost incomprehensibly, "--go any harder."

Dean bowed his head as far as he could, chin tucked to his chest, mouth hanging open and spilling gasps. "Make it -- make it hurt," he rasped, coming from nowhere and surprising him and Bailey both if his sudden pause was anything to go by. Dean's hips followed the movement of Bailey's pullout back as far as he could before his hips hurt, wanting the press a body against him, unyielding. "I mean it."

"Okay."

It was the last thing Dean remembered before everything went black.

\--

When he woke up, he thought he'd been dreaming, asleep back in the motel with Sam. He waited for the familiar sounds of an a/c clanking on, or a car idling outside, Sam's soft breathing and strange half-vocalizations during an intense dream. But there was nothing like that; only a hollow drip-drip-drip and an increasingly anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something wasn't right. For one, he was propped up.

He turned his head to make sure, and yeah, that was stone or brick behind him, rolling smooth against the back of his head when he moved. It hit a spot on his head, tender, where he'd been knocked out. Probably concussed. Dean's eyes opened to another person's staring straight back at him, unblinking. It spooked him and he jerked before he remembered; Bailey, back at the bar.   
Dean opened his mouth to say something, and that's when he noticed the red line at Bailey's neck. His throat was slashed, a clean cut, blood down the front of his already shockingly red shirt. He hadn't been dead long. Dean had one totally helpless and terrified moment where his throat closed up and filled with rising bile, where he thought, _Oh shit, did I do this? Did I finally lose it?_.

Panic kicked in and he tried to move, to get up, but his arms were tied behind his back, shoulders wrenched so bad they almost felt dislocated. His feet were crossed and tied up with what felt like rope at the ankles. And this place wasn't the bathroom in that bar, no tile and fluorescents, no thump of music. Just hard, cold wall pressing at sore spots in his back and the concrete floor squishing his numb, bound hands with the weight of his upper body resting on them. His scars pulled tight like they were going to bust open.

There was only natural light inside, probably an abandoned warehouse if his sense of the place wasn't off. Dean had spent a surprising amount of time in empty warehouses. A streetlight fluttered from across the street and shed _some_ illumination, but not much more than the moon. The dripping was from old pipes, or maybe it was rainwater leaking from the roof, but it taunted Dean with its steady rhythm, an unshakeable pulse. Mice squeaked and pushed at litter in the corner. God, this place was a dump.

The weight of his cell phone was gone from his jeans pocket, and his keys, which freaked him out more than anything else, except maybe the corpse. Dean shifted and tried to see if he had anything else on him, but he hadn't taken a gun; Jesus, he knew what he wanted when he left, there was no lying in the face of such an obvious move. He'd wanted a fuck and a gun would have compromised it and this poor guy was dead and staring at him and Dean had to look away, breathing so hard he felt lightheaded.

A light in his eyes, sudden, not like an overhead flicked on but like a fucking laser boring into his retina. Dean couldn't stop the noise he made. He had to fight to close his eyes against it, spots bursting behind his eyelids, but then it was over just as suddenly. He hadn't heard anyone, and he wondered if he was drugged because nothing was making sense.

He opened his eyes again.

The man was obviously homeless, too many layers, dirty and patched in several places. He had a strangely blank face, and his skin was so black he was hard to see in the light. His right hand held a flashlight, beam pointed at the floor. His left held a coil of rope.

"It's awake!" The voice was just as sudden as the light had been, and nearly as painful; high, creaky, cheerful.

Dean considered how much damage a crazy homeless person could really do to someone who'd already died and suffered the worst kind of torture. Dean considered how he could _not_ die again. He wondered if Bailey had been scared. He hoped it had been quick. "Untie me."

The man didn't answer him at length. His arm twitched, the one holding the flashlight, and the beam danced on the floor. "Had such a hard time getting at it, Sammy's gotten goooooood." His creaky voice went shrill, nails on a chalkboard, and his mouth parted in a smile to show yellow teeth.

Demon. Had to be; nothing else, supernatural or otherwise, would take Dean, kill Bailey, and mention Sam right off the bat. Well, at least now they were on even terms. "Let me guess." He squirmed his back against the wall so he could inch himself up straight and look up at the demon, eye-to-eye. "I got away, and it pissed off all you black-eyes, so you're gonna, what? Drag me back there? Sam'll just get me out again. Whaddya say we just skip the whole thing and let me go, and I'll make sure Sam doesn't eradicate your, uh. Can I even call it a soul?"

He flicked the rope against his thigh. "Send the meat back where it belongs. So troublesome. I'll tell Samuel it said goodbye." He smiled again, delighted, and dropped the rope. Dean watched it tumble, hardly making a sound when it hit, and stared when the demon held out his palm. His eyes turned an iridescent, milky white.

"Lilith."

"Bye-bye, Dean."

The first time he died, Dean didn't see any white light; only the ceiling and a fuzz along the edges of his vision. This time Lilith cast light so bright it was practically biblical, lighting the whole room up like the fourth of July.

He closed his eyes against it. He hoped they wouldn't mangle him and leave him like that for Sammy. He hoped Sammy didn't worry too much when he woke up and found Dean missing.

The light went out.

\--

He opened his eyes to see Lilith stumbling back, whether because of shock or because white-lighting like a flash bulb took a lot out of her, he didn't know.

"_Stupid Samuel_," she said, the man's voice practically a shriek.

"Huh," Dean said.

He was still alive and tied up in a dingy warehouse with a corpse and a demon. He wasn't dead. Things weren't looking great, but he wasn't dead. Of course, things weren't looking great partially _because_ he wasn't dead, but if Dean was making a list, that wouldn't exactly rank at the top.

For all of Lilith's shock over Dean's still being alive -- he kind of felt her, there -- she recovered quickly. The man's body bent to retrieve the rope and the flashlight she'd dropped during the confusion, and it looked painful, borrowed joints no doubt aching.

She was bent over like that when Sam kicked the door in and slammed the man's body up against the wall from ten feet away. He was storming and furious, no jacket and his shoes were untied, trailing laces with swift thwacking sounds as he walked. He spared a glance at Dean, face etched out of stone, and Dean knew there was relief under there somewhere.

Lilith rolled the man's neck as much as she could with Sam's power holding her against the wall, and Dean tensed all over, sick, when he heard bone cracking.

"Sammy. Been a while."

"Pretty stupid of you to attack my brother," Sam snarled, now within two feet of her. "You should have known I'd come running."

She simpered, which was as disturbing a sight as Dean had ever seen. In that body, lips in a sweet, guileless upturn, eyes wide and crazy and imploring, it was vile. She _had_ to have bodyhopped into that guy because she was out of options; old homeless black guys didn't wear the same way as little girls. "You kept him hidden so well, Samuel. Even the hounds couldn't sniff out the meat. Lucky me he wandered out, all alone."

"I'm going to say this once. You and yours aren't coming after him. His soul's mine; contract's null and void, _I_ went in and got him out."

The lovesick glaze to the man's face faded, milky eyes becoming twin beacons glinting in the dark room. "You don't play by the rules, Samuel."

"You know what I can do, Lilith," Sam said, leaning in closer. "Probably know more than I do about it. I'll rip your army apart and the rest'll follow _me_."

Dean didn't have time to process the implications, didn't have time to freak out; black smoke poured out of the man's mouth and swirled up to the ceiling. Sam stared up at it, neck craned, until long after she was gone. Dean noticed he didn't do a thing to stop her.

"Sam."

Sam whirled around,‭ ‬startled,‭ ‬as if he'd forgotten Dean was even‭ there‭‬,‭ ‬which made the hair on the back of Dean's neck raise.‭ ‬Then the spell was broken,‭ ‬and Sam was at his side so fast Dean didn't register him moving,‭ ‬a‭ ‬film with frames missing.‭ ‬He pulled Dean forward and‭ ‬cut‭ ‬his ropes‭ ‬with a knife,‭ ‬helping Dean arrange his limbs.‭ ‬He didn't waste time rubbing the blood back into his fingers‭; ‬he stumbled over on his knees and felt‭ ‬for‭ ‬Bailey's pulse,‭ ‬an urge he knew was futile even as his fingers slid through blood.‭ ‬Sam tugged at his arm.

"Dean, don't. Your fingerprints."

Dean pulled his hands away, wanting to tell Sam that it didn't matter, that officially they were dead anyway, but the words choked in his throat. He stared down at Bailey. "He's dead, Sam." Dean sounded accusatory, angry, and he was, but not just at Lilith.

"I know."

He jerked away from Bailey's body and onto his feet,‭ ‬ankles wobbling and nearly giving out.‭ ‬Dean wiped his sticky fingers onto his jeans.‭ "‬Do you‭ ‬--‭ ‬is that guy she possessed dead‭?" ‬He looked across Sam's shoulder to see the man in a heap on the floor by the base of the wall,‭ ‬neck at an impossible angle.‭ ‬His ankles almost gave out on him again but he made it across the room,‭ ‬toppling onto his knees just as he reached him.‭ ‬His hands‭ ‬hovered‭ ‬above‭ ‬the man‭; ‬Dean wanted to move him but he didn't know where to start.

"Jesus, stop! Get your hands away from him."

Dean's hands froze in mid-air and stayed; his body followed the order, but his mind still pushed against it. "Was he dead before?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Sam crouched next to him, and Dean's arms fell limp to his sides. "We can't spend any more time here, the cops'll come."

He reached over, sleeve pulled up to cover as much of his hand as possible, and carefully pushed aside the man's jacket. Dean saw the top of his phone and a lump of keys in the right front pocket of his pants, and Sam maneuvered both out without touching anything bare-handed. Pointless; their hair and who knew what else was scattered around the scene, probably Dean's DNA on Bailey, his spit. At this point, the FBI sniffing on their trail again was the least of his worries.

"Come on," Sam urged. "We have to leave."

\--

The motel room looked the same as Dean had left it. The sight of it, the feel of it, heater on and blankets messy, as inviting as a motel room ever got, sent a jolt of queasy shock through Dean's body. He hardly remembered how they got back here. He could hardly make sense of the car ride back, recalled it in flashes of Sam's hands gripping tight on the wheel and the parking lot of the bar where he'd left it. He'd only been two buildings over; Lilith probably had to drag him down a back alley, minimal fuss for demon strength. He still didn't know what she'd done with Bailey, or how. He didn't really want to find out.

Sam didn't let him linger long, pushed his back until Dean went further and further into the room. They ended up at the bathroom. Dean was so sick of bathrooms, the way they looked inside, white and sterile when they were anything but, germs from a hundred different people crawling around, microscopic. He stared dumbly at the plastic pink shower curtain; the hooks were little decorative seashells. He stopped when Sam forced him to sit on the closed toilet seat.

"I need to see where else you're hurt."

Dean's jacket was gone, he didn't know where it went, probably lost it back at the bar. All he was wearing was his long-sleeved Carhartt and his jeans, his boots. His toes felt cold in socks and boots, like they'd gotten wet and stayed that way. Dean looked at Sam's face as Sam peeled his shirt off of him, momentarily obstructed when it passed over his head. It landed somewhere on the floor, out of range of his vision.

Sam's mouth tightened when he got a look at Dean's chest. Dean looked down, following his eyes, to see if it was the scars that made him react. A few of stitches had burst open. There was no blood; they gaped open, pink-white and ragged. He flinched when Sam pressed thick, greasy ointment from an unmarked tube to them, smearing it on as thick as sunscreen. It smelled like cloves.

"They won't heal."

Sam's hands shook over his skin. It was the only real tell, the only obvious chink in his armor. "Yes they will. They need more time. They're what killed you, they need more time."

He bent his head and worked at the laces on Dean's boots, fingers picking at the double-knots. Dean used to tie Sam's shoes with double-knots too, to keep him from tripping all over the laces, and at some point fell into the habit himself. Safer on a hunt. More practical.

Sam handed him the tube of ointment. "Put some of this on your shoulder."

"What?"

"The wound on your shoulder."

He didn't know there was a wound on his shoulder, but now that Sam mentioned it, it was one of the places on him that hurt more than others. Dean squeezed some of the stuff onto his fingers and blindly put them up to his skin, felt unmistakable groove of teeth embedded in it. He didn't remember Bailey biting him. "Shouldn't we clean it out first--"

"I know what I'm doing, Dean." He snatched the tube back and tossed it onto the counter. Dean's boots were off and on the floor, and he must have been concussed because everything felt surreal and time wasn't passing the way it should have been. "Here." He gripped Dean's hand and started to pull him up, other arm coming out to support at Dean's waist.

"I got it."

Sam didn't answer. His hands left Dean's and went to his jeans, working open the button.

"Whoa, you don't need to--"

The standing order not to fight, combined with a blank look from Sam, shut him up. He waited as Sam pushed his jeans and boxers to his knees, then waited around more as Sam sat on the floor to work his feet out of the clothes, one at a time. Dean wobbled once and clutched the pink shower curtain for support. Sam stood back up and turned on the shower, running the spray over his hand to test its temperature.

Dean turned around and had one leg in the tub when Sam's gasp stopped him. "What the _fuck_?" Sam's hands were on his skin, the bite mark on his shoulder, another below the base of his neck, and tracing scratches down his side. Dean had no idea when those happened, where exactly they came from. "Is that what you were doing, why you left? That guy -- he, _that's_ why?"

"Sammy--"

Sam pushed him into the shower. He braced himself, standing sideways, left half of his body in the spray, right half out. His whole back side faced Sam, every scrape and bruise. Dean's shoulders hunched.

"After, after everything I did, trying to keep you safe, do you know how hard it was to make sure they couldn't find you -- get you? I had to keep that goddamn spell working and I had to keep them away from you, keep you close or they'd -- and you drugged me and left me for a _fuck_?"

Dean didn't say anything, and Sam didn't make him. He stood there for a few moments, the only sounds the shower and Sam's angry breathing, until Sam swore and slammed out of the bathroom.

\--

Sam wasn't in the room when Dean made himself leave the shower. He was standing outside, leaning at the wall near the vending machines, their hum so loud Dean could hear it through the walls. Sam did a whole lot of nothing; he stood and stared out at the parking lot. Dean watched him through the window, dripping onto the carpet in his measly towel and shivering. It lasted until someone pulled their Toyota into the space next to the Impala, and Sam came back inside.

His hands were shoved deep into his pockets and his shoulders were hunched. "Put some clothes on," was the first thing he said, after closing the door.

Dean did. Just boxers and a shirt, but it counted as clothes. They stuck to his skin and bunched as he struggled to get them on, his body too wet from the shower. The bedspread and blankets stuck uncomfortably to his skin too, when he sat down. He couldn't help but fidget. He knew what was coming, and knew exactly how pretty it _wasn't_ going to be, especially with Sam's powers pushing him to spill his guts, messy and no take-backs. His hair dripped cold water to his shoulders and his skin tightened into goosebumps at the sensation of droplets running down his back.

The bed made a creaking sound when Sam sat. "Dean--" Sam started, low. It was at the same moment when Dean opened his mouth to head him off, to apologize, although first on his list was trying to convince Sam to take that damn stranglehold off of him. He should have known better; Sam sent him a look so determined it closed Dean's mouth for him. "I'm sorry, but, you're gonna lie to me with half a chance. I can't risk it, man."

He didn't know what Sam was talking about for a minute, confusion vocalized with a soft noise, but he figured it out. What the hell; could Sam read his _mind_ now?

"When you left tonight--" Sam stopped halfway through and visibly changed tactics; he licked his lips and slowed his voice down to a monotone. "If I don't stop you, you're going to do it again, aren't you?"

There was an order in there somewhere, but Dean didn't know what it was. His voice strangled in his chest trying to figure it out and come up with an answer. "Do what--"

"_Answer me_," Sam growled. His eyes flashed as his whole face shifted, contorted, honing itself into furious angles. The bottom row of his teeth looked jagged, lower lip jutting out.

The answer forced itself out, bewildering Dean; he didn't know what he was answering, didn't know what Sam had even asked. "Yes." Sam's -- Sam's powers were so fucking strong he could get an answer without Dean even _knowing_? He probably looked like a total idiot, mouth hanging open, breathing fast in fear and confusion.

It must have been the answer Sam was expecting, because he didn't react. "Even with what's out there, Dean?" he asked, voice a challenge. Then he laughed. Dean couldn't figure out which part freaked him more. His breathing was so loud now it sounded like a whirring in his ears. Sam didn't stay laughing long; it trailed off into silence and a deep frown on Sam's face. "Of course. You're not stupid. Really good at acting like it but you knew -- you _knew_ I was trying to keep you safe, and you fucking -- laughed in my face -- made that deal -- I --"

What happened next floored Dean so utterly he thought he felt his heart stop in his chest. Sam started crying, head down and hands pressed to his face, hiding him from view. He was silent about it, shoulders wracking and long fingers trembling against his face. Dean waited, staring straight at Sam like he might somehow figure out what was going on and shout out the answer, _Bingo!_. But nothing like that happened. Sam kept on crying, quiet little hitches and then longer ones, sobs not vocalized.

He stopped, finally, after about a minute, and pulled his hands away after making a halfhearted attempt to wipe his eyes. His bangs were sweaty and limp in his face, his eyes puffy and shining, tracks down his cheeks. Sam rarely cried. Dean could count on one hand the number of times Sam had cried since childhood; about Jess a few times at night when he thought Dean was asleep, and Madison, after Dean made his deal... He was more an angry crier in the first place. After Dad found the acceptance letter to Stanford and the yelling started, Sam drew himself up with as much blustery indignation as he could manage, getting redder and redder until he finally blew. They screamed at each other, Sam hiccuping back sobs until Dad caved in and begrudgingly signed the financial aid paperwork that Sam couldn't go without, Dean having totally failed to mediate.

Dad had thrown the papers at Sam; they bounced off him and hit the floor in an angry rustle. Sam coughed and bent over to pick them up, coming back up with the papers clutched tight to his chest. "_Thank you_," he half-yelled, chest hitching, no thanks at all, just more venom.

"You got what you wanted?" Dad asked, gruff and dangerous and itching to stoke the embers into a roaring fire again.

"Yeah, you got what you wanted, too," Sam had sniffed, "now that I'm fucking leaving."

Dad stiffened and flipped out and Sam still had months before the semester started, months they could have had to cool off and talk about things, put it into perspective, but Sam couldn't shut up, and it had all been set in motion, too late to stop.

"If you leave, you're not coming back."

The look on Sam's face wasn't dissimilar to the way he looked at Dean now, helpless and ugly with too much crying, memories echoing in their tiny motel room. Dean shuddered.

"Shit. I -- you can't take off and leave, you knew you couldn't, or you wouldn't have drugged me. And you left anyway." Sam's voice turned loud and accusatory instead of the nails-on-chalkboard tear-choked it had been. He still sounded all nasally, though.

"Sorry," Dean mumbled, looking at a point over Sam's shoulder so his face blurred into meaningless shapes.

"God, don't even." Sam sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Dean watched it fall to his lap, limp. He shook his head like he was clearing water from it, and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a bitter grimace. "If I do it to you, will you _stop_?"

Dean boggled over what he meant, totally not getting it, mouth turning down in tight confusion. Then this "Maybe" came out like he was possessed, or having some sort of out of body experience. He halfway ignored it, habit by now he'd had to do it so many times. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"However much you need it, I can do it. If that's what it takes." He lifted his face, jaw set tight and stubborn and eyebrows raised like Dean was going to fight him on it. Well. Not like Dean _could_, it was a moot point. "However you need me to."

When he realized what Sam was talking about, he expected something cataclysmic to happen, or at least some sort of physical reaction. Instead it was still just the two of them sitting on opposite beds, staring at each other.

"Christ, this is sick." It came out of him in an exhale, hardly vocalized.

Sam laughed humorlessly. He itched the side of his throat, fingers dipping beneath the collar of his blue and white striped shirt. "Yeah, like everything else about this has been absolutely wonderful." He stopped itching and shrugged uncomfortably, forehead scrunching up into lines of tension. "It'd be safer," he said carefully, rationally, "you could trust me."

"You're kidding. You've got to be kidding. No fucking way."

Sam got all pissed off like he always did when Dean disagreed with him, the rationality turning into indignation. "Don't try and go into denial about this, Dean, you said maybe, and you know you can't lie to me."

"Maybe isn't _yes_," Dean snapped, getting up from the bed in a push of muscles following the lead of the adrenalin that seemed to have taken him over.

"Where are you--"

Dean pointed to the bathroom door with mocking exaggeration. "I'm going to go puke about ninety times, if that's okay with you."

Sam stood up from the bed. In a tiny motel room, it didn't take more than the space of a second to cross the floor, and that was even without the benefit of Sam's freakishly long legs. He was up at Dean's side while Dean pressed his shoulder against the bathroom door and curled his hand around the handle, staring to turn.

"This is bullshit. Don't run from me."

Dean's hand dropped from the handle.

‭"‬I'm not an idiot.‭ ‬I've thought this through.‭" ‬He shifted,‭ ‬inching closer,‭ ‬and Dean's body went stiff.‭ ‬He felt like‭ ‬he would have pushed him away and run‭ ‬out the door‭ ‬if Sam's goddamn powers weren't playing him like a marionette doll.‭ "‬You keep sneaking out to let some‭ ‬--‭ ‬random dudes in bus stations and rest stops and wherever else,‭ ‬you keep letting them fuck you,‭ ‬and Lilith's going to nail your head to the Impala like a goddamned hood ornament.‭" ‬Sam pulled back,‭ ‬far enough to where Dean had breathing room,‭ ‬and leaned up against the wall,‭ ‬head turned so he could keep an eye on him.‭ ‬Still,‭ ‬he was an immovable obstacle,‭ ‬and even if Dean wasn't ordered to stand there,‭ ‬good luck getting past him physically.

‭"‬She already tried to kill me,‭" ‬Dean pointed out.‭ ‬"And I'm alive,‭ ‬with my head attached,‭ ‬aren't I‭?

"You're not listening. I can't protect you if you -- I can stop you from going out, but that's not going to solve anything long-term. Say we need to go to Bobby's. Say we need to get toothpaste at the store, or we need to do laundry. Lilith's going to come after you then, and I'm telling you, we got _lucky_ tonight. She'll figure it out, sooner rather than later."

"So you _know_ why she couldn't kill me?" His voice crept up into a register he hadn't know he had.

"Of course I do. I'm the one who brought you back. I'm the one who did it --"

"Did _what_?" Dean demanded.

Sam went silent, having obviously said too much. Dean mangled some sort of exasperated noise in his throat and looked away. The air between them was thick.

"So," he started over again. If Sam wasn't going to answer him on the Lilith count, he could at least answer him on the _other_ pressing issue. "Screwing me is somehow going to fix all this?"

"What's the alternative, Dean? Holing up in this fucking motel room until kingdom come, waiting for the day when I slip somehow and you sneak out to fulfill some _rape fantasy_ and Lilith rips your fucking heart out?" He was running out of breath halfway through the outburst of words, 'out' choked with more breath than voice.

"Whoa, wait a--"

"You said you'd want me to do it. Maybe isn't _no_." He wasn't sure if it was intentional, but Sam's voice went softer, an imitation of Dean's earlier words.

"Well, I don't know, Sam, maybe I'm a little fucking unhinged." Dean's angry shout rumbled in the room, and he half expected to hear it echo. Instead, there was silence and Sam's white face staring back at him. "I'm a walking corpse, you've fucked with me so hard I don't know which way is up anymore, and let's not forget whatever dark side bullshit you did to get me out of _hell_ in the first place." By the end, he was out of breath, heart thudding with literally painful thumps in his chest. He winced and rubbed a hand over it, recoiling a bit when he could feel the thick lines of slashes through his thin shirt.

"You done?" Sam asked levelly.

"Fuck you."

"No, really. I'm serious. Dead serious. I don't think you get it." He pointed at the front door across the room, his body still carefully angled to box Dean in. "Out there, you die. In here, I can take care of you. Got it?"

"Why don't you just _make me_? If it's for my own good, just -- go on ahead and do it. What's another fucking line?" He shouted the last. He was vaguely proud of himself for not giving into hysteria and screaming something that made no sense, even if his voice did rise a few levels in pitch. Dean was bad at fighting with anything other than a right hook.

"That what you want? You want me to make you take it and like it? That what happened down there, Dean?" Sam closed in more of the scant inches separating them, so now there was a weird collision of heat between them that Dean could feel warming his skin like it was sun on a hot day, only that was crazy and impossible besides.

"Shut up."

"That's your problem, though, you want it like that already. You're just too chickenshit to admit it."

"Are you listening to yourself? Do hear the shit coming out of your mouth? _Have you lost your fucking mind_?"

Sam slid his thigh between Dean's, his height making them mismatched puzzle pieces. Dean could feel the soft old denim of Sam's jeans brushing the hair on his thighs against the grain, itchy and uncomfortable. He pressed his back flat against the wall behind him. "If I take the order not to fight me off, you gonna bolt?"

He wished there was an opportunity for him to lie, for him to say 'of course not,' and then run the hell away as soon as Sam said the magic words. Unfortunately, Sam had Dean in a literal freaking cross-hair, his leg millimeters from somewhere Dean _really_ didn't want a forceful shove. He wasn't sure if Sam's powers were on red alert, if the terrified flutter in his stomach was the whammy; it usually felt like a bubble rising in his chest and forcing out words in its wake. "No," he said finally. "I'm dead, right?"

Sam flickered a smile. "Right." He clenched the muscles in his leg, maybe a not so subtle reminder to Dean that it was there and that -- yeah. "I know you're going to want to fight me," he continued, like he was rattling off facts on their latest hunt. "If you wanna fight, fine. But don't be a dumbass and run out there, because I promise you," Sam's breath smelled like cinnamon gum and stale booze, "I'll be scraping you off of the sidewalk and you'll be back in hell."

"I already said I wasn't gonna."

"Good. Get on the bed."

The command was laced stronger than anything Sam had said before, excluding the order not to fight. The force of it it sent the air out of Dean in a pained grunt. His spine locked up and he started for the bed before Sam even had time to move away. "Dude," he said, going for admonishing and coming up with overwhelmed. "Overkill." He was sitting before he registered it, waiting.

Sam followed him over to the bed, three or four measly steps, but stopped at the foot. The height difference was even more evident; Dean came up to hip level and Sam looked like he went all the way up to the ceiling.

"Take -- take off your shirt."

The fabric passed over Dean's face, obscuring his vision, and when it was over his head, his eyes went back to Sam's face. Sam was biting his lip, hands hovering over his belt buckle but unmoving. Dean's chest prickled as Sam took in his scars, although he'd seen them plenty before. "You said you were gonna --"

"Dean," Sam cut him off sharply. Their eyes met, and Sam's were --

Black.

Dean sucked in a breath and scrambled up the bed, blood rushing in his ears. Sam must have willed him or told him to stop, because he couldn't get any further away. "C-Christo," he stuttered.

Sam's eyes, their normal muddied color, narrowed in confusion and then rapidly dawning understanding. "Is that what you're freaking about?" Sam asked. "Did you think I was _possessed_?"

"No. I thought maybe you had _demon blood_." His voice came out wavery. "Your eyes were black, Sam."

"What?" Sam always did have a way of making that one word speak volumes. He was also still a pretty terrible liar; Dad drilled them so hard on physical tells that Sam ended up over-compensating and just closing down his whole face and staring at you dead-on. Nobody did that, except maybe sociopaths. "Dude. Are you all right?"

Dean's breathing was coming easier, though his heart was still thumping like a bad transmission. "Either your eyes were black, or I'm -- " he shook his head and laughed, the sound like a rattle, "crazier than I thought."

Sam came cautiously closer, stopping within arm's reach of Dean and putting a knee on the bed. He tucked a leg under him and sat, hands where Dean could see them, mouth grim. "You're not crazy," he admitted, and then rubbed his forehead like he was getting a headache. "From what I read, this is pretty standard."

It sounded like Sam was gearing up to actually tell him something, so Dean stayed silent, wary of testing his luck.

"It's like the hell vision you had before, when you could see the demons under their host bodies." Host bodies. What a nice way of putting it. "Your soul's sort of -- it's kind of in a limbo. Hell's got a claim on it, but I put it back in your body. There weren't any real cases of people being, um, rescued from hell, but apparently demons can do it, and you're the closest thing to a demon, so."

"So, just now," Dean said slowly, working it out, "I was seeing... what? You're not possessed, so I was seeing your demon side?"

"Yeah." All of Sam's earlier aggression was gone, and in its place Sam looked sheepish, tired, and incredibly earnest. "I figured this might happen. I tried to put a glamour on, but that only works a superficial level."

Dean had a knee-jerk reaction to get after Sam for messing around with witchcraft, but at this point, he was starting to get the idea that yelling about a glamour would be like yelling about clouds during a hurricane. "What about the rest of it?"

His head spun; being out of hell was just the beginning, never mind the memories and scars that went with it. It was the actual fact of him being out in the first place that opened up a can of worms. Whatever Sam did to Dean; necromancy was his best guess. Why Lilith hadn't been able to kill him, which Sam knew the answer to. And now his hell vision. He had a sudden feeling of pieces clicking into place; the man in the parking lot, Sam refusing to let him out from under the car. "The guy you killed back in Kansas, he was a demon?" He'd been pretty sure before that Sam had a reason. He'd wanted very badly to be sure.

"Yeah. One of Lilith's."

He sighed like he'd been holding his breath. "You didn't want me to see?" he asked, voice cracking.

Sam paused. "I didn't want you to -- worry. You'd want to go after them, start hunting again, if you knew what was out there, and we couldn't. You'd get yourself killed. I wasn't ready."

Dean had been nodding, staring down at the blanket with totally unseeing eyes, but at the last he looked up. Miracle of all miracles, he might have been smirking, incredulous, at Sam. "_You_ weren't ready? So we weren't staying locked up _just_ for me?"

"Of course not. Bringing my brother back to life took a lot out of me." Sam tried to make it a joke, but he was too serious to pull it off.

_'So on the seventh day he rested from all his work,'_ Dean thought, not a little amused.

He knew all this was as much as Sam would spill. He could ask until he was blue in the face about how Sam brought him back, but unless he was willing to bust out some drugs and try that method again, Sam was holding tight to his decisions. Dean had a feeling he wouldn't like the answer if Sam ultimately gave it; did he _want_ to know what was going on in his body, or what Sam did to bring him back? It was the last line, the one Sam seemed utterly reluctant to cross, and Dean could see the wisdom in that.

If they crossed their last line, what good would it do? What was the point in living out a life if it was all _wrong_ and he was probably hell-bound at the end of it regardless? Why not say screw it, and take them both out with the fucking Colt so he could be _really_ certain there wasn't a chance of Sam staying behind? Now, he could rationalize it all he wanted. He could give himself the same strange pep talk about how Sam couldn't help what he was and that he did the best he could with it. Like a ghost who hadn't even known and couldn't help that she was dead, Sam couldn't help being one of Azazel's pet projects. It was hypocritical, because Dean usually put rock salt into ghosts, but he could live with it.

The way Sam was looking at him reminded Dean that he was shirtless. Maybe, he amended, twitchily rolling his shoulders and trying to ignore the race in his pulse, it wasn't their _last_ line.

"You still set on doing this?" Dean asked awkwardly.

Sam didn't even flinch. "Uh huh."

"I gotta say, we're really, uh. I just mean, we do this, it's the kind of fucked up you can't come back from."

"Yeah, that's the general consensus on going to hell, too," Sam deadpanned. The corners of his eyes were crinkling in humor, not really amusement, but a horrible sort of truth. "I'm well aware. I told you I thought this through."

They were brothers who were going to fuck, and the fact that this was the bottom rung on their ladder of problems struck Dean as funny. Not to mention Sam's thinking that their fucking would be a _solution_ to some of those problems. Not to mention that it really might be, since it kept Dean out of harm's way.

He saw Sam's hand coming toward him without getting why until Sam's fingers brushed against Dean's bicep. Dean looked at the hand on him, then at Sam's face as open as he'd seen it for ages, and back at the hand again. The touch raised goosebumps on his skin, but that didn't stop his eyebrows from drawing together cynically.

"Sam, seriously," he said, watching as Sam reacted to his less than encouraging tone. "Is this your idea of putting the moves on me?"

Sam dropped his hand with an annoyed grunt. It lay on the sheets between them, stark against the white. "Well, what the fuck, would you rather I push you down and tell you to think of England?" he snapped. He held up his other hand before Dean could come back with a retort. "Just -- don't."

He dropped his chin and Dean watched, fascinated, while Sam worked open the clasp to his buckle. It was an old belt, leather, and had seen them through quite a few hunts, including one in Great Salt Lake that left it brittle and stiff. The sound of it sliding out of Sam's belt loops was a sharp hiss. His jeans drooped without the belt, showing the black band of one of the rattiest pairs of briefs that Sam owned. Dean stifled an outright laugh and shook silently, until Sam noticed and raised his eyebrows defensively.

"I don't exactly have a reserve of clean underwear, you asshole," Sam grumbled. He stood up and pushed the jeans down his hips, stepping out of them with surprising ease for how tall and gangly he was. Dean held back a response, knowing it would make Sam even more pissy.

The briefs were black but thin, hiding in no way that Sam was half-mast. Dean did his best to ignore it and looked at the sheets again, suddenly not so amused. He made himself breathe slow and steady, but not so obvious that Sam would call him on it.

"You wanna lie down?" Sam prompted gently. Dean gritted his teeth; he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding his nerves, if Sam went for babying him that obviously.

He felt like there should have been more of a lead up, more momentous than Sam's urging, to kick this whole thing off. There should have been a contract signed in blood ink, something dramatic and tangible.

The pillow under his head felt too firm, and Sam's shadow was thrown across most of the room, dimming the bright light from the overhead. Dean kept his eyes on the ceiling, but saw Sam stripping out of his shirt in his peripheral vision. He tossed it onto the other bed instead of folding it or putting it with the pile of dirty clothes like he usually did.

Sam wasted no time in getting down to it. He climbed back onto the bed and shuffled on all fours until he was arranged over Dean, his thighs boxing Dean in. Sam was _heavy_, and Dean squirmed to get comfortable, sheets whispering against his back. He gave up after a few twists got nothing. He couldn't see the ceiling without some part of Sam obscuring it.

Sam's face was tilted down, hair in his eyes, as he pulled at the waistband on Dean's boxers with grim concentration. This wasn't so bad, not that Dean thought he had room to call it _bad_ in the first place when he gave Sam such a damning 'maybe.' Sam was bigger and warmer and a lot more intense than any other time they'd been in the same bed together, but otherwise was the same. He had the same way of silently devoting himself to a task, as though Dean was a book Sam was turning the pages of, studying.

He waited for the next step, for Sam to strip him bare or tell him to think of England. Sam still fiddled with Dean's boxers, but he stopped to look at Dean. "Is this what you wanted?"

Dean shrugged. He didn't know what he wanted. Sam had a better chance to find out if he used the whammy. Hell, a magic eight ball would have a better idea of what Dean wanted right then.

"Or did you want me to, um." Sam started out tentative, leaning forward by degrees and sliding down Dean's body until he could feasibly bend without doing some complicated yoga. "Did you want me to kiss you, or should I not bother?"

Dean shook his head. "Sam," he tried. His hands wanted to come up from their place at his sides, but he felt like the bed was cement, sucking him in. "Maybe you should --" He tried to force out _stop_, but the word clogged in his throat.

Sam seemed to take his half-baked statement as permission. He leaned all the way down and met Dean's mouth with little fanfare. Open-mouthed and wet and bristly with stubble, he kissed only long enough for Dean to realize that that's what they were doing. Dean clenched his fists.

"Maybe you should take off the whammy," Dean said, feeling like he was strangling himself to get it out. Sam's body was like a fucking anvil holding him down, dick squished against Dean's stomach.

Sam froze, pushing up with his hands so he could stare down at Dean. His face was blank, like he couldn't decide how bad it would be if he gave something away. "Dean," he said carefully, "I took the whammy off of you like ten minutes ago."

All he saw was Sam's eyes, human as anything, but now that Dean knew what was behind them, he couldn't help but see. Shadows, tricks of light -- what he saw before and dismissed, he knew it for what it was now. Dean lifted one hand, unfurling it from a fist, and pushed against Sam's chest with more force than strictly necessary. Sam moved off of him with the resistance you'd expect, his sheer size an impediment more than anything. "What?" Dean said dumbly, an afterthought.

Undeterred, Sam closed the space between them again, but he didn't climb on top of Dean this time. "You wanna fight me, you can fight me," Sam promised. "You just don't get to leave." He smiled then, a rueful twist that Dean read from years of practice; Sam didn't welcome a broken nose or a black eye, but he wouldn't stop Dean from giving them.

He wasn't sure on the timing, but Sam had asked him -- _asked_ him -- to do things, strip off his clothes, lie down on the bed, and Dean went along with it. He wanted to pass it off the obedience as his not knowing he had a choice, but fuck, it wasn't true. Sam told him to do things before, and it felt like his skin would peel away if he tried to take a step in the opposite direction. He did it because Sam asked, and because it was something he wanted to do.

Sam kissed him again, startling the hell out of Dean, who expected some touchy-feely crap before the main event. The surprise made Dean's mouth drop open, but Sam didn't take the opportunity; he kept the kissing as chaste as open-mouthed, incestuous kissing could be. Dean figured it was an allowance, Sam both giving him a choice and testing the waters so he could decide what worked best. It was so like Sam to keep his brain on during sex, like it was a chess game and he had to think four moves ahead.

Sam said he could fight him, and Dean owed him one for the endless days of chafing at the bit. Dean curled a hand in Sam's hair and tugged. Hard. Sam made a noise and pulled back from his mouth, and the way he looked at Dean was flat-out calculating. Yeah, Dean wanted to play it that way. If Sam thought this was going over easy, he had another thing coming.

They kissed for a while, until Dean's jaw was getting sore, and he was yanking at Sam's hair and pushing at his shoulder before Sam managed to distract him by slipping his tongue along the inside of Dean's bottom lip. He pulled back again at Dean's sudden stillness, and the fistful of hair Dean held slipped from his hands. A few loose strands were tangled around his fingers.

"Good?" Sam asked.

"Yeah." Sam bent down to kiss him again, and Dean twisted his head away before he could. Sam pulled back to look at him in surprise. "But you can stop treating me like I'm your prom date."

Sam's mouth flattened. He ignored Dean completely and sealed his lips over the side of Dean's neck. Dean slid his hands up and over Sam's shoulders, and the span of his back seemed to go on for miles, warm and slightly damp. There wasn't a whole lot Dean could find appealing about Sam's sweat. He dug his nails in, a reminder to Sam to get the show on the road, and Sam smothered an irritated laugh into his skin.

"Is this your idea of fighting me?" Sam asked, fitting the words between Dean's collarbone and jaw. "Pretty weak, man."

Dean was about to come out with a suitably pissed off comeback, but Sam moved faster than he could open his mouth. He had Dean's wrists in both of his hands and yanked them level to his own head, pressing them down into the mattress so hard it felt like the bones were going to bruise. The hold itself wasn't great, and if it weren't for the whole of Sam's body holding him down, Dean thought he could have wriggled out of it. Sam held him like that and looked down at Dean for a long moment.

Dean was expecting more questions; questions about what he wanted and if he was sure about this ranked high on the list, frankly. When Sam leaned down, his fingers tightening like corkscrews around Dean's already tender wrists, until he was so close they were trading air, what came out of his mouth wasn't remotely expected.

"Were you like this with the guy at the bar?" His breath hit Dean's spit-wet lips like wind. "All quiet and playing nice?"

Dean was frozen with trying to remember the details of Bailey's face, but all he could conjure was his red shirt and the way he held his pool cue, too loose in large hands. Dean swallowed and flexed his fingers to get blood back into them, but Sam took it as an attempt to get away, and bared down harder.

"No," he admitted finally. Sam obviously expected an answer, from the way he was hovering and studying Dean's face.

"I bet you rolled over and spread before he got his fucking zipper down," Sam sneered.

"We fucked in a bathroom, so I was standing up," Dean sneered right back.

But Sam only smiled down at him, briefly. "You're gonna roll over for me," he promised. It should have sounded ridiculous, but the gravelly timbre to his voice caught Dean off-guard; he shivered before he remembered that it was Sam, and Sam shouldn't be able to make a virgin with a bad case of the flu _shiver_. "Do you still have lube, or am I going to have to make do?"

Holy _shit_. Dean's arms jerked of their own accord, and this time Sam let him press against the hold. "There's some stuff in my jacket," he said, uncomfortable with the reminder of why it was in his jacket in the first place, and what had happened when he tried to go out and get laid.

"Great."

In a move that would have made an Olympic vaulter proud, he pushed himself off of Dean and stood up. Dean's arms tingled and he shifted his legs around on the mattress, but didn't otherwise move. Sam was coming right back, if the determination with which he went through Dean's jacket was any indication. He tossed gum wrappers and old receipts out to land on the floor, and Dean was too caught up to tell him he was looking in the wrong pocket. He found the lube easily enough, and the spare condom was in there with it, but Sam tossed that on the floor too. Dean sat up.

He'd seen Sam's package on more than one occasion, and now he'd been up close and personal with it. Sam probably carried Magnums of his own, the lucky bastard. But Sam didn't go over to his duffel or get his wallet; he walked back to the bed, tossing the lube from hand to hand. He gave it one final toss, this time onto the bed, where it landed in front of Dean.

Still standing, and without a word, Sam pushed his briefs off of his hips and down his thighs. Everything Dean had been expecting to go on had so far been neglected, so he shouldn't have been surprised, but he was. Stepping closer, he clamped a hand down on Dean's shoulder. For a second Dean thought Sam was pulling him in so he could suck Sam's cock, and he couldn't breathe. All he did, though, was maneuver Dean until he was sitting so there was enough room for the both of them on the edge of the bed. Sam dropped the hand and sat down, bare thigh up against Dean's covered one.

It was like being naked flipped a switch for Sam. Back on the bed, he wasn't awkward or funny at all, and Dean could hardly believe it was the same brother he mocked for having ratty underwear. He was huge and he smelled like generic motel shampoo, warm all over; he was still Sam, though, right down to his ridiculously bony knees, but Dean wasn't looking at his _knees_. He was looking at Sam's solemn face as it came closer and closer, eclipsing the light, and they were kissing again.

The angle was weird, both of them craning their necks, and it was sloppier this time around, but Dean got into it. Sam went slow, giving him time to breathe through his mouth. Sam broke them apart to move them around again, slipping behind Dean. Since they weren't kissing anymore, it left Dean to try and process the fact that Sam could do all this without talking it to death or freaking out even a little, and that he was _good_ at it.

Then Sam managed to short-circuit his brain.

Dean knew he was naked, but it was one thing to see it and another to feel it, hard on the small of his back. The slide of bare skin on skin wasn't hesitant in the slightest, or even accidental; it just was. It just was Sam's dick above the rise of Dean's ass, and he could feel precome wet at the tip, the smallest amount of stickiness transferred to Dean's skin. He didn't even know that Sam had gotten fully hard. Sam's arms were around his waist, holding Dean against his dick, and he could probably feel how hard Dean was shaking now.

Fuck, he did it for Sam. It wasn't much of a realization in the midst of everything else, and possibly _Sam did it for him_ was bigger. Somewhere between when Sam brought it up and now, with Sam's cock right up on Dean's skin, he'd gotten so hard his boxers were tented and straining. It didn't make him feel much better that they were both getting something out of this, other than his own self-preservation, and he had a sick thought that Sam might have been using his powers to get them both to like it. It was just a thought, totally bogus at that, since Dean knew what it felt like when he was turned on for real -- he knew what it felt like when he _wasn't_ \-- and Sam wasn't enough of a fucking martyr to whammy himself.

God. They were both into it and it was fucked up, but Dean had meant "yes" when he said "maybe," and this was fucking proof. Sam's hand smoothed over Dean's stomach and then into his shorts, and he jacked him a few strokes, until Dean rolled his hips back and wanted to laugh at the way Sam's breath came out in a grunt at the friction.

Sam yanked Dean's boxers down with a swift, careless tug. They hooked around his ankle and he had to shake them off to the floor, but even that wasn't enough to stop the inertia. He was barely naked before Sam uncapped the lube.

"Get on your hands and knees," Sam ordered, no other word for it. It might as well have been the whammy, but it wasn't. There was no answering painful grip on his stomach, forcing him to comply; just a hot rush of _Jesus Christ_ as he went up onto all fours, super-conscious of Sam's view.

Sam's fingers were so warm that the lube wasn't a shock; a trail of it was left behind when Sam drew a finger up, starting from his balls. It was fucking dirty, the first testing push against Dean's hole, the way the muscles clamped and ached in response. He slid in to the knuckle on the second try, and at once Dean's body clenched, even the tendons in his neck tight with shock.   
Sam gave a little wriggle, hooking inside, and Dean's breath came out like a punch.

He could feel Sam's finger like it was twice its size; the ridge of his fingernail and the bend of his knuckle, the slight taper and fullness as he worked it in and out. He wasn't stretching so much as testing and gauging Dean's reactions. Dean sucked in a mouthful of air and clamped his lips against it, and the sheets beneath him started to blur. Sam pulled the finger out and didn't bother to come back with two.

Sam shifted behind him, and there was a pause before Dean heard the rushed, slick sounds of Sam coating his dick. It seemed to last forever, taunting smacks and Sam's stuttered breathing, until the bed creaked and dipped as Sam knee-walked his way up to Dean's parted legs. When he lifted his head, he could see Sam's wavering shadow looming on the opposite wall, and the mostly shapeless lump that must have been him, with his ass in the fucking air. Dean dropped his chin back down to his chest.

Sam used one hand to part him, his palm spanning half of Dean's ass, and pushed his cock forward with his hips. It bumped against the crease over and over, like a taunt, spreading lube and maybe more precome. Dean made some sort of noise, not hearing it himself, but feeling the rasp in his throat and the way his chest rumbled. Sweat was beading at the back of his neck and on his forehead, and when he licked his lips he could taste salt there too.

The push inside was uncomfortable and slow. Sam adjusted his grip on Dean's ass once he had the head in. He thought Sam would stop a moment then, maybe to give him time to adjust, but like everything else, Sam blew that idea right out of the water. He kept going, filling him with steady pushes, Dean's muscles locking and fluttering and his stomach tight with the burn. He could hear Sam's quiet noises, not gasps and not moans, but broken off exhalations. The last inch or so was harder, and Sam rolled his hips hard to shove in all the way.

And then he just stayed there, unmoving, while Dean had nothing to concentrate on but the fat length of his brother's dick in his ass and the way his arms were trembling to hold him up. God, he was big.

"Jesus," Sam muttered.

"You gonna do it?" he asked unevenly. "Or do you want instructions?"

Sam didn't answer him. He put one hand on Dean's hip for leverage, hot like a brand, and worked his hips so he was straining to get deeper. "Shoulda done this ages ago," he breathed, and he sounded like he _meant it_.

Dean bucked up into Sam's hips, knowing how ridiculous it would look, some twisted, naked version of a rodeo, but Sam fucked his hips down flush to Dean's ass and licked the side of his neck. Dean honest to God _whined_, the worst sound he'd ever made, and it made him shudder to hear it.

Sam fucked so hard it might have sent Dean sprawling if he hadn't steeled his forearms and dropped lower to the bed. His neck hurt from the way he was bent. Sam pulled out almost to the tip and thrust back in on one motion, like he wanted Dean to pay special attention to the way he clenched on nothing with the lack. A few times Sam put pressure on his prostate, and it was like worrying a sore tooth, a deep ache buried somewhere inside. It drove him crazy, the best kind of itch Sam wasn't scratching so much as grazing.

"Fuck, I'm close, fuck," Sam said shakily, and Dean groaned. He didn't know how long they'd been fucking but he wasn't sore, wasn't raw with it, and he didn't want Sam to ever fucking stop.

Dean's world went tiltawhirl, he felt like he was light, floating, and blinding brightness suddenly made him dizzy as blood rushed from his head. He winced his eyes closed and then open again, and felt Sam's thighs beneath the backs of his. Sam had him on his lap and was grunting right in Dean's ear with the effort it took to keep fucking his ass. Their bodies went up and down and Dean's cock smacked his stomach in time, bursts of sensation. He wrapped a hand around his cock and started jacking off, turning his head so his cheek was squished against Sam's lips.

"This what you wanted?" Sam panted, and not like he expected Dean to answer. He shoved his fingers in Dean's mouth and Dean bit down, tasting lube and the faint leather-salt of Sam's skin.

He garbled back something like "yes," distorted from the fingers as his lips and teeth bumped against them. One of them brushed the back of his mouth, almost enough to make him gag.

"God, Dean, I'm gonna shoot," Sam hissed, his mouth wetting Dean's face. "I'm going to fucking come in you."

He wanted to say _wait_, wanted to beg Sam to keep fucking him, to not stop, but his mouth wouldn't work. He swallowed hard and Sam's hand slipped out of his mouth to grapple at the side of his neck. He couldn't come like this, not without something _else_, something deeper or faster, even though Sam was fucking him so hard the bed hit the wall and left marks, and he was stripping his own dick so fast his palm was smarting. He wasn't -- it wasn't enough, and Dean didn't know what fucking would be, and his eyes burned with something he hoped to Christ wasn't tears.

Sam went stiff behind him and shouted brokenly, fucking into Dean with half-aborted thrusts until Dean could feel the warm of his come inside, still spurting. His chest seized on the breath he was dragging in, and his hand went so tight around his cock that it hurt. Sam moaned something unintelligible in his ear, shivering with the end of his orgasm. His hips still worked, slower now, probably tender with how hard he'd just come, and his come slicked the way even more.

Dean started keening suddenly, low then getting louder and louder, until Sam reached around him and curled his hand around Dean's cock. He could feel that he was about to come and couldn't fucking believe it, not like this from out of nowhere, and the noises kept tearing from his throat until he was hoarse.

Sam said "C'mon" in a slur, and that was the last nudge. He shot one rope after another, until come splattered all over Sam's hand, the tight circle that slipped to cover over his cockhead on the upstroke. Some of it dripped down to the bed. His thighs trembled and his head spun and he was _still coming_, Sam working it out of him with soft noises pressed to Dean's hair.

The comedown was surreal, feeling Sam gently pull out with a hiss and set them on the bed in a tangle of limbs. Dean sprawled on his side, cheek against the mattress, and blinked sweat out of his eyes. He was dimly aware of Sam moving off of the bed and around the room, but he wasn't sure what was going on and didn't care until a lukewarm washcloth was being dragged over his skin.

He'd never cop to passing out, but he did, dreamless and uninterrupted.

\--

When Sam woke up, Dean was sitting dressed on the bed, eating organic potato chips by the handful. He licked seasoning off of his fingers before he turned away from the Western he was watching to glance at Sam, who looked simultaneously relieved and terrified.

"Morning," Dean said. He dug around in the bag. "This John Wayne movie sucks."

Sam sputtered a laugh and swung his feet over the edge of the bed to touch the floor. He scratched a hand through his hair and kept looking at Dean. "How are you?" he asked, sounding normal.

Dean found himself amused by Sam's totally obvious attempt at pretending like they hadn't fucked. Not even that, but that Dean didn't nearly get himself killed last night, and there wasn't some poor dead guy left in their wake. "I'm great. These chips are stale. Pack your shit and we'll go get breakfast." He didn't try to pretend like what he said wasn't a big deal; he kept his eyes on Sam, serious and unflinching, but did keep eating his chips.

"Um. Dean, I don't. Last night didn't --" Sam stuttered his way through part of a denial before squaring himself and looking at Dean head-on. "Just because we, you know, decided to do that doesn't mean everything's fine."

"No shit."

Dean was the last person on earth who believed in the magic healing properties of cock. He was under no delusion that Sam had fucked him sane again, or that he was going to be able to handle being out in public well. His body was still a zombie mess, and his brain wasn't much better. Sam's acrobatics the night before had ripped open another line of sutures, and Dean stood in the mirror of the bathroom that morning smearing ointment on it for twenty seconds before he realized that it wasn't bleeding. He was fucked. They were fucked. Sam still had demon blood and some fucking terrifying abilities, for one.

They hid in the motel like freaking ostriches with‭ ‬their heads buried in the sand,‭ ‬thinking they were safe when they weren‭'‬t. As if Lilith didn't know where they were, and as if it was going to fix a damn thing. Dean wiped his mouth and then his hands, crumbs tumbling onto the cheap comforter. "I'm not a moron. But we're close to Bobby's, and Bobby can put us up better than some crap motel can."

Sam was quiet for a minute. "Dean, if I pushed you too hard into this, I'm sorry --"

‭"‬Oh my God,‭ ‬shut the hell up,‭" ‬Dean said,‭ ‬his voice rising in‭ ‬honest annoyance.‭ ‬He shut the TV off and thumped the remote down on the bed. "This isn't about us fucking. I mean, yeah it is because we fucked and that's no small thing, but we're sitting ducks like this. I think we need to go after Lilith before either of us are going to get our heads on straight." And he thought Sam could take her, which was an important part of the plan.

"You wanna go after Lilith?" Sam asked, low and tense.

Dean nodded, putting some bravado into it. "Yeah, I do."

Sam's face was mostly unreadable, too many things on it to break it down, but he looked like maybe he wanted to smile. "Can we skip breakfast? Or at least go through a drive-through or something? Because I don't --"

Dean threw Sam's duffel at him, and Sam caught it. "Pack your _shit_, asshole."

\--

END.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my God, that was something else. This all started because Nepenthene was having a really horrible week, and I knew the she liked tentacle porn, so I decided to be sweet and write her a drabble. I wrote down what is essentially the first few pages of the final product, and went, okay, there's tentacles but no Sam, and I want some Sam. I got mildly drunk and wrote around 10,000 in a feverish rush, and then things started to become melodramatic and complicated and less easy to write. SOMEHOW, my TENTACLE PORN went from just that to an ~epic~ fic with plot and Serious Business elements.
> 
> It seems weird to have put so much thought into this, considering the basic subject matter. I'd be trying to figure out Dean's motivations or something, and metaing in IM with one of the poor losers who suffered through this with me (I will get to them in a moment), and then I'd realize I was talking about TENTACLE RAPE PORN. So, yeah. Kind of surreal. But I think at the core, the fic is about Dean and Sam's relationship and how it could be twisted by the sort of trauma that hell would deliver. Regardless of where the show itself will or won't go, there is no way in hell (hah) that things like this wouldn't happen. Maybe not tentacles, but there you go. Add in my version of what Sam did to bring Dean back and Sam's demon blood, and you've got yourself a nice fic full of explicit porn and PTSD.
> 
> Speaking of what Sam did to bring Dean back, I know a few of you will be like, WTF WHY DID YOU NOT PUT IN A PROLOGUE OR SOMETHING. It's not because I'm lazy, it's because I wanted this to be strictly Dean-POV and Dean would never figure out what went on, so the readers can't either by default. I put in a lot of really obvious clues, some of which seem more important than they are (Stull Cemetery, for one), but you might be able to pick up on it if you squint. I doubt anyone is, like, going to come after me, but I had a beta repeatedly ask me to clarify what went on, and I was sad that I couldn't. :(


End file.
